Speaker 1:
From the Library of The New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made The NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at The NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House.
Theresa DeLuca:
No two days are alike here at The New York Stock Exchange. You'll often find a banner across our facade welcoming a new company to the public markets, or perhaps celebrating a listed company's corporate milestones or new product launch. On this podcast, we've run the gamut of companies listing on The Exchange just this year from Pinterest, to Uber, to Slack, to the fashion company Revolve, and all the international companies like Tufin and GSX that use their IPOs to not only raise capital, but to introduce themselves to the American investing public.
Theresa DeLuca:
New York is many things, the finance capital of the world, the fashion capital of the world, the media capital of the world. You get the idea. It's also the advertising capital of the world. And for all of the guests that have joined us here in the ICE House, we have yet to really dive into the agency world and speak with the creative minds responsible for turning everyday items into iconic and beloved brands. For example, Coca-Cola, GE, IBM, Levi's. And of course, those are ticker symbols KO, GE, IBM, and LEVI, immediately conjure classic images, whether it's "Mean" Joe Greene drinking a cold one, or those classic 501s.
Theresa DeLuca:
Needless to say, we're not taking our entrance into the world of advertising lightly. Joining me today is advertising powerhouse. Cindy Gallop. Her personal motto? "I like to blow (beep) up. I am the Michael Bay of business." Strap in for a conversation on brand building, breaking barriers, and being 100% authentic.
Speaker 2:
And now a word from Chip Bergh, CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., NYSE ticker LEVI.
Chip Bergh:
There's no other brand in the world like Levi's. We're here today because of the dedication of the 15,000 employees that we have around the world. Growth is being driven across the company. Men's, women's, tops, bottoms, outerwear. Virtually every country in the world grew last year. Being associated with an institution that goes back further than Levi's is special. This is where this company deserves to be.
Theresa DeLuca:
Cindy Gallop didn't seek out the advertising industry. It sought her out. Cindy studied at Oxford University and in typical British fashion fell in love with the theater. Her first job took her to Liverpool where she spent time giving backstage theater tours and creating marketing plans. A theater goer told her, "Young lady, you could sell a fridge to an Eskimo." And the rest, as they say, is history. That remark launched a 20-year career in advertising. Cindy got her start at Ted Bates, later making stops at J. Walter Thompson and GGT, which is Gold Greenless Trotts, working her way up the ranks and eventually landing at BBH, Bartle Bogle and Hegarty, where her 16-year career with the firm took her to Singapore to launch the Asia office and the US, where she was eventually named president of BBH New York and later chairman of the New York office and chief marketing officer of BBH Worldwide.
Theresa DeLuca:
If you thought that was a pinnacle of her career, you're not even close. Cindy left BBH in 2005, and she's been a force to be reckoned with ever since. Today she is an advertising consultant, entrepreneur. She has launched two digital platforms on her own and is arguably one of the most emphatic public speakers ever to grace the stage. When she's not on stage, she uses Twitter as her microphone, opining on topics such as ageism, advertising, equal pay, gender equality, and many, many more. Cindy, welcome to the ICE House.
Cindy Gallop:
Thank you. Thrilled to be here.
Theresa DeLuca:
We're happy to have you. Is this your first time at The Exchange?
Cindy Gallop:
It's not, actually. I was last year probably, and this is how long ago it was, when it was actually possible to come and watch the traders on the floor.
Theresa DeLuca:
Let's start from the beginning. You were born in Brunei, Borneo, which you've said was not as exotic or maybe as exciting as people imagine in their heads. Why was that?
Cindy Gallop:
Yeah, so just to correct that, I was born in the UK, but when I was six, my parents moved to Brunei, and so that was where I and my sisters grew up. And I make the point that growing up in Brunei is a lot more boring than most people think, because when I say Brunei, I guess the good thing these days is that people have actually heard of it because back when I was a kid and a teenager, for many years no one had ever heard of Brunei. Now they have some idea of the Sultan of Brunei. They have a sense of where it is, and so there's a feeling that it must have been very exotic. Brunei is a very small state. It has three towns, one main road. And while I had a very happy childhood, I have to say that Brunei was not the most riveting place to be if you were a kid and dying to engage a lot more with the forms of popular culture that one saw it movies and TV.
Theresa DeLuca:
And your father is British, your mother is Malaysian Chinese. You must have learned the tremendous values of diversity early on. And what did your parents do in Borneo and what was that impact on your career and just life later on?
Cindy Gallop:
So my parents were both teachers. We moved to Brunei when my father got a job as an assistant headmaster, and ultimately went on to be the principal of a school, and then ended up as an inspector in the education department. My mother started a kindergarten which got very successful and eventually became a fully-fledged private school. Growing up in Brunei as the child of a mixed marriage was interesting because my parents met and married back in the late '50s when mixed marriages were not at all common. And so I encountered racism growing up on both sides. To the English I wasn't English, to the Chinese, I wasn't Chinese. And that's undoubtedly something that has absolutely informed my desire to see all forms of bias eradicated so that everybody has access to equal opportunity.
Theresa DeLuca:
And I know I've heard from a lot of different podcasts that I listen to, or public speakers, or just public figures around the world. I mean, I know David Chang, the world-renowned chef has talked about this and kind of coming to terms with his heritage and being a kid here in the United States, it was difficult for him. I've heard Joanna Gaines, the designer. She talks about her mother who is a Korean and kind of struggling and finding that identity later on, so it's a really interesting thing. You were the oldest of four girls. Did leadership come natural to you?
Cindy Gallop:
Well, I wouldn't say that. I mean, inevitably, as the oldest daughter, I was the repository of all of my parents' ambitions. My mother was tiger mother par excellence. My childhood was subject to a lot of academic pressure. It was very much come top of the class or you didn't come home. And that was not, to be frank, a lot of fun, but it was all worth it when, entirely because of my parents' desire that I do so, I managed to get into Oxford. And all of those years of pressure were very much about fulfilling my parents' ambitions. I was told I was going to Oxford. I had no choice, but the moment I landed there in 1977, I was so grateful for all of that pushing because it was a privilege and an honor to go to university at Oxford. I had an amazing three years there. It's opened doors for me ever since. I met a fantastic network of friends and we're still friends to this day. And so in retrospect, I'm very grateful to my parents for pushing me, but at the time it was not fun.
Theresa DeLuca:
But when you were there, you studied English literature and you fell in love with theater. Did that have anything to do with performance? What about that love and finding theater really impacted you?
Cindy Gallop:
So Oxford opened my eyes to a lot of things I had not had the opportunity to engage with, and theater was one of them. And actually within this, I do want to pay tribute to my college at Oxford, Somerville, which was founded in 1879 as one of a small handful of colleges for women who had not been allowed to attend Oxford. And in fact, even when the all-women's colleges formed, women were not allowed to graduate from Oxford until decades later. And so Somerville College is named after Mary Somerville, the woman who actually defined the term scientist. It was created for her. She was the tutor to Ada Lovelace, who invented computing. And that pioneering spirit absolutely fed through into its students. And so Somerville encouraged you to really express yourself and find yourself in all sorts of wonderful ways.
Cindy Gallop:
And I just came upon the Oxford student drama scene and loved everything about it. And so I did everything. I was president of the Somerville Drama Society. I wrote, acted, directed, stage managed. And I decided that all I wanted to do was work in theater for the rest of my life, but I knew I wasn't good enough to be an actress or director. And I used to draw a lot when I was younger and my friends pulled me into designing theater posters for their shows. And from there, I got sucked into promoting their shows and I really enjoyed that. And so ultimately I became a marketing and publicity officer in theater because of that.
Theresa DeLuca:
And to go off that, your mantra is, "You will never own the future if you care what people think." In those first few years of getting into advertising, even being in theater, is that where you developed that thick skin and that creativity?
Cindy Gallop:
No, not at all. I was as rampantly insecure in my 20s and 30s as any other woman is. I mean, essentially when we are born as women, everything around us conspires to make us feel insecure about absolutely everything to do with ourselves. The way we look, the way we talk, the way we dress. Nice girls do this, nice girls don't do that. We spend the rest of our lives coming back from that, and some of us never do. And so people regularly ask me, "Cindy, what was it that made you as confident as I appear to be today?" And honestly, it's 59 years of life. It's life experience that led me to the point where I say the best moment in my life was the day I realized I no longer give a damn what anybody thinks, but truthfully it wasn't a single moment. It was a gradual realization. But that is the only way to live your life. And I very much want to shortcut that process for younger women, because I would've loved to have gotten to that realization a whole lot earlier myself.
Theresa DeLuca:
In 2005, you left BBH and you struck out on your own. And you're the founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld.com, which is a pro-action software that helps brands and businesses to use shared values and shared action for good, communication through demonstration. IfWeRanTheWorld also teamed up with Levi's, which was here just a few weeks ago for its IPO, on their campaign. This was a few years ago to feature the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, and really show the townspeople and the workers there, it is a steel town in Pennsylvania, wearing Levi's and working. So can you walk us through that case study and what you did with them?
Cindy Gallop:
Sure, because it wasn't quite like that. So IfWeRanTheWorld came out of my now over 30 years working in advertising and believing very strongly therefore that the future of the is doing good and making money simultaneously. And not in the old world order way that most companies currently do this, which goes, we make money here and then we do good by writing checks to causes to clear our conscience over here. But the new world order way of we make money because we do good. We find a way to integrate social responsibility into the way that we do business on a day-to-day basis that therefore makes it a key driver of future growth and profitability.
Cindy Gallop:
And so I believe that the business model of the future is shared values plus shared action equals shared profit, financial profit, and social profit. In other words, when brands and businesses come together with their audiences, and those may be consumers, employees, analysts, on the basis of values that you all share, which by the way, is the most important requirement for a good relationship in life as much as business. You'll never truly bond with someone who don't share the same values. So when you come together around shared values and you are then enabled to collect and collaboratively co-act on those values, ie, walk the talk together, you can then make things happen in the real world that will benefit consumers, benefit society, and benefit the brand in its business. And so IfWeRanTheWorld enables brands and businesses to come together with their audiences to do that. And so when I spoke to Levi's back... Gosh, I mean, this was something like nine years ago now.
Theresa DeLuca:
Yeah. 2009, 2010.
Cindy Gallop:
Yeah. What I taught them about was the fact that their core audience, millennials, were at the time, especially in the wake of the financial crash, experiencing a real backlash against Wall Street, where we are now, to corporate greed as they saw it. And there was correspondingly a real appreciation of blue collar work, getting your hands dirty, honest labor, an honest day's labor for an honest day's pay. And that drove a lot of movements, like a real interest in organic farming, open gardening, back to the land. And so what I said, "Levi's," was that, "you have the opportunity to actually bring your audience together with you on the basis of these shared values, because you are the company that created what you wear when you do that honest day's labor, Levi's jeans."
Cindy Gallop:
And so together with Levi's and the agency Wieden & Kennedy, we identified this opportunity for Levi's to put their values into action, to actually work with this devastatingly poor town Braddock, to rebuild the town of the community together with... I mean, the mayor of Braddock, one of the youngest mayors in America, absolutely rebuilding the community from the ground up and to invite Levi's millennial audience to actually co-act and do this together. And you had the opportunity to actually come and work in Braddock if you wanted to. We created the atomic unit known as micro-actions that make things really easy to do. You could come and help paint the library, work on Braddock farms, but you could also help from further away. You could contribute to Amazon wishlists that the various institutions of Braddock created.
Cindy Gallop:
And so the whole idea was you co-act on these shared values, and what do you wear while you're doing them? You wear the original jeans that were created for exactly this purpose, for hard work and honest labor, and represent therefore fundamental American values. And the reason that's important, by the way, is because this is an exercise that neither individuals nor companies do enough. So my startups are designed around my own philosophies, one of which is that everything in life and business starts with you and your values. And so the single most important starting point for everything, whether you are a person or a business, is to look into yourself and to ask yourself, what do I value? What do I believe in? What do I stand for? What am I all about? And then to absolutely have that determine the way you go forwards, because honestly the secret of happiness is living your life and working your work according to your own values.
Theresa DeLuca:
And I know that Levi's, if you go in now, they've had some different organizational changes and I think they brought in new members of the team. But now if you go on, it's really interesting to see that they're very transparent about where they donate money, where their money goes to, organizations that they're supporting. It hits you right at the website. So it's been interesting to watch that change, too.
Cindy Gallop:
And I must pay tribute to their amazing Chief Marketing Officer Jen Sey, who actually was a client of mine back in the days when at BBH I oversaw the Levi's business. But I've been particularly admiring of the fact that Jen, based on her own past as a gymnast, has been especially vocal on the subject of Me Too in the gymnastics world and the appalling Larry Nassar case. And she was speaking out about all of that years and years and years before anybody saw the truth of what she and all of her fellow gymnasts were saying. And I'm so in awe of how amazingly brave she's been and how she continues to be an outspoken champion for diversity in all these areas.
Theresa DeLuca:
Are there any companies, Levi's aside, that you see right now and you're like, wow, that's how you do it? They're really nailing their values. They're open about it, or they're doing something in a very creative way that's engaging with consumers.
Cindy Gallop:
Do you know depressingly, the answer is no, I can't think of a single one. And the reason for that is that regrettably in the corporate world, it's very easy to give the appearance of doing something without actually doing it. And this is a point I make constantly. Don't talk about diversity. Don't create inspirational, emotional, compelling campaigns about diversity. Don't do stunts about diversity. Just be diverse. And there are an awful lot of companies doing all of the former and very, very few doing the latter.
Theresa DeLuca:
I want to get your take on something that's going on right now. It's June and we are in Pride month and I live in New York. I walk down the street every day to the subway. I take Ubers. And it's been really interesting to see, because I would say about two weeks ago, the kickoff of the month, all of a sudden it was rainbows everywhere, which obviously I think equality is something that should be supported, should be out front. Happy to see that.
Theresa DeLuca:
But from an advertising perspective, it's been interesting to see storefronts and retailers that have different campaigns going on right now. And in support of pride even Uber, you can track your car and it's a rainbow line that shows you how far your car is away. Again, just kind of very interesting, creative tactics. And what I want to just get your opinion on is, do you think this has a lasting impact? Is it something that more and more people are becoming accepting of? That more and more people will say, hey, this company supports equality, this is something that I share my values in? Or do you think it's something that they're doing to kind of follow the status quo and they feel like we need to do this because it's June?
Cindy Gallop:
Absolutely the latter. So everything I just said applies to what we are currently seeing around us in Pride month as well. I can tell you that LGBTQ people in advertising are massively discriminated against. For many years a number of my friends did not dare to identify themselves for who they really were. I've had friends and colleagues who have let people think their partner was the opposite sex. And so again, there is a huge amount of rainbow washing going on, and that is why... I tweeted about this just a couple of days ago because the BBC reported on that horrific case in London of the lesbian couple who were-
Theresa DeLuca:
On the bus.
Cindy Gallop:
... attacked and beaten up on a bus by a group of young men. And there were these horrific photos of them covered in blood and battered. And I tweeted that out and I said, "Agencies, brands, don't put Pride all over your advertising. Hire and promote LGBTQ people and put them in leadership so that together we can work to change this forever." And I felt it was very important to say that with that image, because especially, by the way, if you are a brand headquartered in a relatively urban area, let's say New York-based, San Francisco-based, Los Angeles-based, you really don't see for yourself the reality behind why pride is so important, which is that on the streets of London, a lesbian couple can be attacked and viciously beaten up for simply being two women together.
Cindy Gallop:
And so I urge companies and brands to, I mean, quite frankly, forget the Pride branding. I'm all about communication through demonstration. Do it, and then by all means, put that out there. When you can point to your LGBTQ leadership team, your CEO, when you can point to how your LGBTQ employees say, "This is the best place for all of us to work," that's your pride branding right there, not putting the rainbow flag on everything in the month of June.
Theresa DeLuca:
Last week, you published an article in Ad Age on ageism. You outline actions businesses can take to end ageism and reshape the culture just as you've mentioned. Some points on that, you said, "Say your age. Hire the biggest growth driver for our industry, which is expertise. And when you're told the target is youth and millennials for branders and marketers, say, 'Why? Why shouldn't it be an older crowd?'" What do you have to say about that?
Cindy Gallop:
So I'm a very action-oriented person, and I've been championing age in our industry and in business generally for years. And it's important to say this, by the way. All of the work I do in this area is because I am a hardheaded businesswoman, and I cannot believe the enormous amount of money every single industry is leaving on the table by not being diverse. My industry thinks its glory days are over, that the golden era of Madison Avenue is behind us. My industry's glory days have not even begun because we have not even begun to see what advertising could be when it deploys the talent and creativity and skills of women, people of color, LGBTQ, the disabled, older people.
Cindy Gallop:
So I basically have spent quite a long time talking to a lot of people in my industry and beyond about ageism. And it's interesting because you this is the one ism that has had a lot less attention paid to it, but affects all of us because we all age. And so increasingly more and more people have been speaking out about it. But there are a lot of pieces about how awful it is, and how inhibiting it is to the economy, and how traumatizing it is to older Americans. But there are very few pieces saying, "This is exactly what you do about it," in a way that is enormously actionable for anybody and everybody. And so after months of having conversations, dinners, salons with leaders in our industry and loads of people writing to me as they saw me speaking out about this more and more, that piece in Ad Age, and I encourage your listeners to go and check it out. It's called Eight Ways to Turn Ageism on its Head, is a list of actions and micro actions that anybody and everyone can take at whatever level of a company to change this.
Cindy Gallop:
And I'm asking everyone to do that. And while the list is specifically tailored for the advertising industry, and the reason for that, by the way, is because we are a hugely influential force in popular culture. What we reflect about aging in advertising absolutely shapes general public attitudes, behaviors, and opinions. And so this is why it's so particularly important my industry addresses this, but actually that list of actions is totally extrapolatable out to every other industry. And so the important thing too is to realize that ageism impacts at every single point along the age spectrum. You can be dismissed for being too young as much as you're dismiss for being too old. And so it behooves every one of us to do everything we can to change this every single day.
Theresa DeLuca:
I mean, to your point, you said that advertising is one of the most powerful forces. It really can change public opinion and perception. But to your point to go back a little bit, you also said that the industry is saying our glory days are over. There's issue areas and we're seeing cracks. How do you think that the advertising industry will change? Because obviously you have Netflix, we have Amazon Prime. People aren't may be tuning into regular cable TV as much and seeing those ads like they used to. It's just media is changing the way we get videos. The way we consume things are changing. But one has to think there's still going to be advertising one way or another, but it does have to change. How do you see that change happening in the 21st century?
Cindy Gallop:
First of all, by the way, let me just say that the reason I do what I do is because I bloody love advertising. I bloody love my industry. Advertising at its best is an enormously powerful force, and there are many ways in which that force can be used for good and to make money simultaneously, which obviously is my philosophy. But you've just asked that question in the passive tense. All of this changes when I and everyone else in advertising make it change. And I don't wait for things to change, I make them change. So I have quite frankly given up trying to change the advertising industry form within. And so I now urge women, people of color, LGBTQ, the older, disabled, everyone deemed other to actually start their own industry. To start their own businesses, to take a long, hard look at the industry, identify what it is that they think is missing, how they would do things differently, what they could bring to the table that is not there, and start their own agencies.
Cindy Gallop:
And I put the word agencies in inverted commas because I don't mean by that agencies like the ones we see around us currently. I mean start something that gives you agency to invent the future the way that you want to. And I'm happy to say that I've been putting this call out now for several years and at the same time encouraging people who stopped their own businesses because of that call to tell me about them, because I celebrate them at every opportunity. And more and more people, especially women, are absolutely now inventing the advertising industry of the future. And boy oh boy are those the people to invest in because they know where the future is and they will take you there.
Theresa DeLuca:
Are there any women that are high on your radar that you like to follow?
Cindy Gallop:
Absolutely. So let me recommend Judy Shapiro. So Judy is an older woman in advertising. She's an ad tech specialist. She has a brilliant ad tech platform called engageSimply. And by the way, I really recommend your listeners check that out because it is an example of the female lens on the ad tech world, which otherwise is appallingly riddled with fraud and disgusting unethical behavior. So Judy got so frustrated that she did something I've been urging women to do for years. She has started the female-founded holding company of the future, and it's called the Trust Web, because what she is building is a holding company of ad tech companies designed to be the future of our industry focused on trust. And wow, do we ever need to rebuild trust in the industry right now. This is what clients need. They need to know that they can absolutely have this, especially, by the way, again, in the ad tech world. And so the work Judy is doing is phenomenal. And I highly recommend that your listeners check her out.
Theresa DeLuca:
Very cool. Be sure to check her out. You said you prefer Twitter over Instagram as you are a verbal rather than necessarily visual person. Case in point, you've got nearly 70,000 Twitter followers and nearly 190,000 Tweets. Absolutely growing. I've been looking at your page all day and it just kept refreshing and refreshing. I don't know how you do it. While you've never posted on Instagram, you also have 2000 people just waiting for your first picture there, but you've used that as your microphone. And like I said, even though you left the advertising corporation and the structure there, you've certainly become a powerhouse in your own right. What is it about Twitter and that community that you've been able to kind of build out and connect with people?
Cindy Gallop:
Well, the way I use Twitter, and this is something I recommend to people generally. My office is based at NeueHouse on 24th and Park, and I did a talk for NeueHouse which you can find on YouTube called Building Your Personal Brand. And the point I make there is that I'm just being myself on Twitter. I've never set out to get more followers. I'm just living my life on social media in the same way that I live my life every day. And by the way, I've integrated social media into how I do that, and I recommend that to everyone, especially again, by the way, my industry, advertising because you wouldn't believe the number of agency leaders pronouncing on social media who are not on it, by the way, or not using it in the way they should. And you cannot understand the appeal of social media unless you really have integrated into your daily life.
Cindy Gallop:
But yeah, I mean, all I'm doing is being myself. As you will have seen, I put out a mix of things I feel strongly about, things to do with my startups, my life, glimpses into it. Things that I think are funny. I don't care if other people do or don't. If I think they're funny I'm going to put them out there in case other people do. And the people who follow me like that. And so the interesting thing I've observed is that 70,000 followers on Twitter is not a big following compared to a ton of people with... But I have a very engaged following and so things that I want to spread do spread. And again, I suspect by the way, because... Actually my followers are pretty evenly divided between men and women, but the women especially, and again, the work I do on gender equality, diversity inclusion obviously strikes a chord there, are sharing what I put out there in a way that really helps me get those messages out to more and more audiences. And I love that. And so, yeah, I'm just being me.
Theresa DeLuca:
That's very cool. And I know that our colleagues here at New York Stock Exchange and ICE, they would absolutely trumpet the horn for engagement and really having great dialogues and have people sharing and be aware that way instead of just having these incredibly massive followings, but you're really just speaking into the black hole there. So I absolutely encourage that.
Theresa DeLuca:
You're also a very vocal proponent for closing the wage gap for women. And I find that very interesting because I know as a young person myself, it's still such a taboo topic for, I think both men and females, but especially females. I think people would rather tell you they're gastrointestinal issues then discuss how much money they're making or what they could be making. And I don't know what strides need to change there. And to your point, you've said, "Ask for as much money as possible." And I definitely think whether you're interviewing or you're going to your current boss and you're ready to ask for that raise, there's still this disease to please, and you don't want to seem to aggressive or you don't want to scare somebody off. But it's an interesting topic because it's important.
Cindy Gallop:
So yeah, this is a topic I feel very strong about people value you at the value you are seen to put on yourself. And that is why I recommend people, especially women. The amount you always ask for is the highest amount you can say out loud without actually birth out laughing. And I can tell you that literally every week I hear from women who say, Cindy, I did that. And it worked a woman wrote to me not long ago and said my pain performance review was due. I know this is your advice. You know, I thought, oh, I can't do that. You know, I went in fear and trembling I did it. And basically not only did I get the number asked for, I got another so many thousand dollars on top of that. I basically doubled my salary because of you."
Cindy Gallop:
So it absolutely works. And by the way, and for your listeners, anybody who is in some doubt about how to put this into action, Cindy bot can help. So two years ago-
Theresa DeLuca:
Cindy bot? What is this?
Cindy Gallop:
Cindy bot. Yep. So two years ago for Equal Pay Day, R/GA, the interactive agency, with the help of several partners, Reply.ai technology, Ladies Get Paid, Payscale, for the data, turned me into a chat bot. So basically I'm built on top of Facebook Messenger and incidentally, I'm so impressed with the job they did because they researched the hell out of me. And so go to the Facebook page that is called Ask Cindy Gallop and message me there. And I tell women how to ask for a raise. And so you do things like I will say, "Okay, right, terrific. What do you do?"
Cindy Gallop:
And you fill in your occupation. Then I go, "Okay, so where are you based?" And you put in your zip code and I will say something like, "Okay. In this area people doing your occupation normally make blah, but you're not normal, are you? So we're going to ask for a damn sight more." And so literally I talk you through exactly how to ask for a raise, and you have options like, but what if they say this? Okay, this is what you do. It's my voice, so be warned. There are four letter words that proliferate. And actually Facebook themselves said it was one of the best uses of bot technology that they'd seen built on Messenger because it is so human. And so again, a number of women have written to me saying, "I use that. I sent it to my whole team because it was so brilliant." So Cindy bot is here to help you get the pay raise you deserve.
Theresa DeLuca:
She's still active? They can still access it?
Cindy Gallop:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Still going.
Theresa DeLuca:
Very cool. You learn something new every day. I saw last night, as I was trying to keep up with you on Twitter, that you were tweeting about the Tonys, which for our listeners is the award in Broadway theater excellence. And I, for one, do not get to the theater nearly enough. I would like to, but I want to listen to a clip from Rachel Chavkin.
Cindy Gallop:
Oh my God.
Theresa DeLuca:
Chavkin.
Cindy Gallop:
Chavkin, yep. Her speech was fan-bloody-tastic.
Theresa DeLuca:
Let's take a listen.
Rachel Chavkin:
And so is walking out of hell. That's what is at the heart of the show. It's about whether you can keep faith when you are made to feel alone. And it reminds us that is how power structures try to maintain control, by making you feel like you're walking alone in the darkness, even when your partner is right there at your back. And this is why I wish I wasn't the only woman directing a musical on Broadway this season. There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many artists of color who are ready to go, and we need to see that racial diversity and gender diversity reflected in our critical establishment, too. This is not a pipeline issue. It is a failure of imagination by a field whose job is to imagine the way the world could be. So let's do it. Thank you. Thank you.
Cindy Gallop:
That sent shivers done my spine all ever again.
Theresa DeLuca:
She won Best Director for a Musical, Hadestown. And I mean, when I heard those words, it's just striking because you think for a minute, how is that possible? How are there no other female directors on Broadway? I mean-
Cindy Gallop:
And do you know, Hadestown and the way it swept the Tonys last night is a fantastic demonstration of how quickly all of this changes when you put women in leadership, because Hadestown also won the Best Score Tony for its composer and writer and Anais Mitchell, who began workshopping it in Vermont something extraordinary like gosh, 13 years ago. I think it's had a very long journey to the Tonys. And during the Tonys, while they don't show people accepting these, you get glimpses of the earlier awards for craft skills. And so Hades won the sound design award. And the sound designer was a man, but he came up to the podium with a woman and he said, "Anybody who works in sound design knows that the sound associate is everybody, and I could not have done it without..." I can't remember her name.
Cindy Gallop:
Hadestown also won the lighting design award, and the man, the lighting designer came up and said at the podium, "Broadway is too white, too cis, and too male, and we need to change that." And it was a really interesting demonstration of how when you have women leading a production as the writer, as the director, they bring in other women, they bring in men who want to see gender equality, diversity, and inclusion. And Hadestown at the Tonys last night demonstrated its own little ecosystem of how much all of this can change.
Cindy Gallop:
And by the way, when it comes to creative output, and I use this analogy of my industry and Hollywood as much as theater, but when you have up at the top a closed loop of white guys talking to white guys about other white guys, the creative output, the product you get is Batman versus Superman, which by the way, did not do well at the box office. When you bring women and people of color and you welcome them into, and I use the word advisedly, the room where it happens, what you get as Hamilton.
Theresa DeLuca:
People are waiting to do these things. I know friends and family members that are fantastic actors and actresses and lighting designers, but they may just not have those connections. They're reaching out, they're working in smaller theaters. They're trying to get these things and in all kinds of different industries, but you have to have those people at the top to your point, who aren't just saying, "Oh, diversity's great. And oh, this is great. And I feel good." A nice pat on the back, but reaching out to those people when they connect with them on LinkedIn, or they say, "Hey here's my video." Or do something to give those people a chance.
Cindy Gallop:
No, absolutely. You know, women need what men get all the time, which is somebody willing to go out on a limb for us. And men get that all the time because when the leadership at the top is male, it's very easy for them to look at a younger man coming up the ranks and go, oh, I can see myself in him. He reminds me of myself at his age. He's great to hang out. He's great to have a beer with. We reckon he can do the job. Let's give it to him. With a woman, there's a completely different set of standards. Well, has she done the job before? Has she done it long enough? Has she done it well enough? And men basically get hired, promoted, funded on potential. Women get hired, funded, promoted on proof and not even then. And so absolutely we need people reaching out, going, we want you in here. We want to see what you can do. We believe in you. When you believe in people, they will absolutely rise to that belief.
Theresa DeLuca:
After the break, Cindy and I discuss life after the agency and on to her life in entrepreneurship.
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Theresa DeLuca:
Back now with advertising legend, Cindy Gallop. We've been talking about the history and impact of advertising past and present. One of my favorite documentaries of all time is called Art & Copy. It was a documentary that came out about 10 years ago and it's all about the advertising industry. The first time I saw it, I swore I was going to go into advertising that night. I was like, this is what I was born to do. Life took a different turn for me, but I want to take a listen to advertising legend Lee Clow and hear about his first years in the industry, and also how he changed his path, ended up at TBWA\Chiat\Day.
Lee Clow:
... into the business. I was working for an agency who represented everything that's wrong with the advertising business. It was run by a guy who basically was unscrupulous. He would do anything to keep a client. He would do anything to win a client. And he basically had mostly contempt for the entire creative department. It was this, "How big do you want the logo, sir?" All they cared about is milking money out of clients and giving them what they want, that kind of formula that makes for so much of the bad work in our industry. And it almost seemed deceitful to allow clients to dictate mediocre work and then pay us for it when we aspired to do something better.
Lee Clow:
So I was the head of the escape committee because it was kind of like, we can't stay here. This is this the devil's workshop. We have to find our way into agencies that believe in the right stuff. And I was lucky enough to discover Chiat\Day, which was just being born at this time. And Jay Chiat and Guy Day were the pirate spirit, rebel spirit that I was trying to champion over at this dopey agency.
Theresa DeLuca:
The guys who believed in the right stuff. Right before this clip, Lee talks about his love of surfing and his love of Southern California. And there's a passion there. And I see the same thing about your love for theater, your love for performance, and for championing these rights. Do you think passion is the secret to success in this industry?
Cindy Gallop:
Sadly not. I mean, quite for frankly, at the moment I'd say the secret of success in this industry is being a white male like Lee Clow is because that will get you a damn sight further than actually anything else, creativity, talent, and passion included.
Cindy Gallop:
The real answer to your question is the key to success in my industry is not being a target of sexual harassment. And the reason I say that is because I've been speaking out against sexual harassment in advertising and the business generally for years, well before Me Too. I spoke about it publicly because nobody else would. When the Harvey Weinstein saga broke back in fall of '20, I thought maybe now I can finally get women to speak up on the record, name names, in the same way those brave women did. And I put a call out on Facebook. And by the way, without thinking a great deal about it, I just posted and said, "Women of the advertising industry, the time has come to call out the Harvey Weinsteins of our industry. Email me. Name names. I will help you break those stories."
Cindy Gallop:
And I was inundated. An absolute avalanche of emails showed up in my inbox. They were global, by the way. I'd always known it was bad. I'd never known it was that bad. And what I saw and continue to see, by the way, because people are still writing to me, completely changed my own thinking. Up until at that point, I had thought that the biggest business issue facing our industry was diversity. I realized it wasn't, and I've been saying this publicly ever since. The single biggest business issue facing the advertising industry and every other industry is sexual harassment because sexual harassment manages women out of every industry. It derails women's careers, it destroys women's ambitions, it crushes women's dreams. And so sexual harassment prevents from getting into leadership and power and influence the female leaders who would make equality, diversity, and inclusion happen.
Cindy Gallop:
And so our industry in terms of who gets to succeed is massively imbalanced because I've seen the stories of all the female creativity and talent and skills that our industry has hemorrhaged over decades because of sexual harassment. And so the playing field is absolutely not level. And if you are somebody who will never be a target of that and have nothing to fear from retaliation, and intimidation, all sorts of truly appalling behavior, again, that I've absolutely seen laid out before me in multitudes, then you are already way ahead of all the people who will never make it because of that.
Theresa DeLuca:
I mean, to that point, how do you see that changing? Obviously, I mean, women will keep working their way up the ladder, women helping women, but in terms of them finding success, do you see that in female-run agencies? I mean, literally females starting their own, just kind of like the VC world for example, was shaken by that. There have been VC, venture capitalists, who started a Me Too movement. They started All Raise for example, and there have been more female-founded venture capital firms coming out and helping each other, or are only investing in female-led companies and things like that. I mean, is that how you see success happening for women? Taking it upon themselves?
Cindy Gallop:
Unfortunately, yes. And I say unfortunately because it doesn't matter how many female-founded venture funds you start, none of them for a long time will have anything remotely like the billions of dollars that the white male held venture funds do. But yeah, I absolutely exalt women, as I said earlier, to start their own businesses. But I urge women to absolutely go out there unashamedly determined to make a huge amount of money because when we make a huge amount of money, we can then fund other women. We can support other women. We can help other women. We can donate to other women. We need to build our own financial ecosystem because the white male one isn't working for us. And so yep, absolutely women who start businesses and hire other women create the kind of working environments that women want to be in.
Cindy Gallop:
But there are essentially two very easy solutions to sexual harassment that I wish the mainstream would adopt. And the irony of this is that the men at the top don't realize how, if they were just to do this, it would make their own lives so much easier. Two solutions for sexual harassment. Number one, make every single working environment at every single level of your company gender-equal or more female than male because sexual harassment magically disappears in gen-equal environments. And that's because A, in a non male-dominated environment, there is no longer the implicit bro endorsement all around you it's okay to behave like that. And B, when in a gender-equal work environment, men engage with women every day as professional equals, are exposed to women's brilliance, insights, capabilities, talent, skills, men ceased to see in one of only two roles, girlfriend or secretary. So that's the first thing you do to solve sexual harassment, make every level of your company gender-equal. Gone, no problems.
Cindy Gallop:
The second thing you do is what my other startup MakeLoveNotPorn is all about, which is promote a culture, a gold standard of good sexual values and good sexual behaviors as much as you promote culturally good values and good behavior in every other area within your company, because this is the one area of universal human behavior and experience that we do not hold people to a public, openly universally understood gold standard in the same way we do every other form of behavior. So I urge leaders talk about this as part of your culture as much as you talk about everything else. At this company, here are expectations. These are our values and these are our sexual values. And these are expectations of our employees, and this is the culture, and if you contravene in any way, you are out.
Theresa DeLuca:
This morning as one of many tweets and retweets that I saw online from you, you quoted venture capitalist, Fred Wilson. Some background, he is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, and he publishes a blog, which I'd recommend checking, out called AVC: musings of a VC in New York, which you can receive daily via email. But in today's blog post, he talked about early-stage VC investments and says, "One of the great truths about early-stage investments is that you have to be patient with them. The losses come early in the winners take longer to realize. It takes 7 to 10 years to get real liquidity in a portfolio of early-stage venture investments. You can't cut it short, it just takes time. Become 7, 8, 9, and 10, the returns will start coming in." You tweeted out part of that quote. Are you starting to see the returns?
Cindy Gallop:
No, actually I tweeted out that quote deliberately because it really resonated with me. I am in this for the long hall and essentially I completely concurred with what Fred said there, which was I mean, obviously, especially in the venture capital world, there is too much expectation of instant gratification, unrealistic pressure to scale. And again, as somebody fighting a very difficult battle with a sex tech startup, I have to be in this for the long haul because I have so many more obstacles than most people do. But that is also no bad thing because time is a very interesting business dynamic in a way that not enough people realize. Completely separate to what you may be doing with your venture, the sheer passage of time changes things. It moves attitudes. Markets rise and markets fall. Time reshapes economies in a way that can then be leveraged over the longer term by ventures that have the ability to do so because they are playing the long game.
Cindy Gallop:
And what Fred said really resonated with me because A, I had to back burn IfWeRanTheWorld when MakeLoveNotPorn blew up. Even I, superhuman as I am, cannot run two startups simultaneously. But I absolutely want to go back to and reactivate IfWeRanTheWorld because people keep asking me about it. I mean, there are people that absolutely get it and want to be a part of it. At the same time, MakeLoveNotPorn operates in Silicon Valley's final investment frontier. The three huge disruption opportunities in tech today are sex, cannabis, and the blockchain. And ironically investors are flooding into the other two more than the other first, which has way more gigantic unicorn and market potential. So I absolutely have to be in it for the long haul. I mean, MakeLoveNotPorn has only been going as a business for six years. And so again, I liked Fred equation in that context, but I'm just a great believer in not looking purely for quick wins, taking a long-term view, and essentially just keeping going until you can find the points to leverage your advantage that really enable you to succeed.
Theresa DeLuca:
We had Andreessen Horowitz's Scott Kupor on the podcast recently and one of the themes that we discussed was timing both from, like you said, being in it for the long haul, but then also just sometimes you're five years early on something, or you're five years too late, and sometimes you're right on the money, or you just have to wait, or you just have to-
Cindy Gallop:
Exactly. And that's why I love... And I think I read this as one of Confucius's saying, but many things attributed to Confucius he didn't necessarily say. But I love this saying, which is, "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
Theresa DeLuca:
Couldn't agree more. You got to just keep going. That's how I feel about running. As we wrap up Cindy, I can hardly keep up with your multitude of projects and ability to seemingly be so many places at once. To go off of what you said about stress, what keeps you sane in the midst of all this craziness?
Cindy Gallop:
Do you know, I'm a huge fan of doing nothing?
Theresa DeLuca:
Really?
Cindy Gallop:
Doing nothing is massively underrated. So I've just spent a large part of this past weekend doing nothing. And by the way, as an entrepreneur, you're always working. And so I did a certain amount of work, but it's also very important to just putter around in your apartment doing nothing. Or in my case lie on the roof terrace I'm lucky enough to have and sunbathe and do nothing. And so I absolutely factor into my schedule moments, pauses, time to do nothing.
Cindy Gallop:
Another aspect of this, which I'm also very big fan of, is sleep. The single best piece of advice I ever got, and I can't remember who said this to me, was get more sleep. And sleep solves an awful lot of things. I'm very fond of saying that every situation in business and in life, especially startup life, can be summed up by a quote from Macbeth. The one that frequently comes to mind in startup stress land is, "Each new morn some fresh horror brings." But in the context of what we're talking about now, "Sleep that nets up the raveled sleeve of care." Sleep solves a lot of things when you're an entrepreneur. A good night's sleep enables you to look much more clear-sightedly at problems in the morning. A good night's sleep just makes you feel better. So I'm a big fan of doing nothing and sleep.
Theresa DeLuca:
Cindy, I can't think of a better note to end on than that. And it's a rainy Monday here, so it's perfect for some sleep. But thank you again for joining us and thank you, Cindy, for coming inside the ICE House.
Cindy Gallop:
Absolute pleasure. And if any of your listeners are interested in funding and backing me and my startups, then please email [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you.
Theresa DeLuca:
Yes. And if you want to follow you on Twitter, I believe it's @cindygallop.
Cindy Gallop:
It is indeed.
Theresa DeLuca:
Great. That's Cindy and then G-A-L-L-O-P. Thanks so much, Cindy, for joining us inside the ICE House. That's our conversation this week. Our guest was advertising consultant and entrepreneur, Cindy Gallop. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. Got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show? Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show was produced by Pete Asch with production assistance from Stephen Romanchik and Ian Wolff. I'm Theresa DeLuca signing off from the Library of The New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
