Is adland’s proverbial glass ceiling being dismantled?
There’ll be many consequences of Covid-19, one may bw more women in senior roles (aleit in a diminished industry.)
Droga5 London has promoted high flyer Shelley Smoler to executive creative director.
Smoler (above) has recently been nominated for an Emmy for her work on Droga5’s Super Bowl commercial ‘Before Alexa’ on top of her work at the agency for Amazon Prime in the US and Amazon Prime Video in Europe and the UK. She was also part of the team that created “Metatronia” for Uniqlo, a performance piece created in collaboration with Solange Knowles and displayed at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
A multi-media contemporary creative then. She reports to D5 London CCO David Kolbusz, still hanging in at the now Accenture-owned agency. No reason why the highly talented Kolbusz shouldn’t of course but in an earlier era he would have been a candidate to go off to be a director. That path is no longer as rosy as it once was though.
At the other end of the spectrum Margaret Jobling (left), formerly of British Gas, has been appointed CMO of NatWest Group, formerly RBS. The bank seemed to have decided it didn’t need one after David Wheldon retired but now it does.
CMOs have been dropping like flies in the crisis as big brands cut back their marketing. As they emerge both shaken and stirred from lockdown it may be that the much-criticised CMO role will make a comeback.
Jobling knows NatWest’s new agency The&Partnership well from British Gas days – which should, presumably, help.