The advertising industry has come a long way since the days of 'Mad Men', and women have been at the forefront of this change. From copywriters to CEOs, female advertising executives have made their mark on the industry, and their influence is still felt today. In this article, we'll take a look at 10 of the most influential women in marketing, from Cheryl McCants to Dara Treseder. Cheryl McCants is the CEO of Impact Consulting Enterprises, a public relations firm based in New Jersey.
She has worked with leading companies such as AT&T and Nike, and has won a Power Leader Award from Time Warner magazine and Essence for her professional and volunteer efforts. McCants believes that marketing is a powerful way of telling stories, and she uses her influence to advocate for women and minorities. Dara Treseder is the General Manager of Carbon, one of Silicon Valley's leading digital manufacturing firms. Prior to working at GE, Treseder provided marketing support to Apple, so she is well aware of the complexities of technology marketing.
In her spare time, she campaigns hard for women's rights and public health, and serves as an advisor to UN Women Initiatives and on the board of directors of the Institute of Public Health. Choi joined Cheil as a copywriter in 1984 and quickly rose to become one of the most recognized creatives in Korean advertising. Barocas spent 10 years on accounts at W+K and four years on the client side as vice president of marketing and entertainment at Six Flags before heading to Mother. Villegas began her career as a publicist at Leo Burnett Colombia in 1990 and is now one of the agency's world leaders. Credle began covering phones for receptionists on bathroom breaks at BBDO NY in 1985 and rose through the ranks to become executive creative director, where she worked at M&M's and Cingular Wireless. Utzschneider spent 10 years at Microsoft before leading domestic sales of Amazon ads.
Both companies' strategies were based on the tenant that good customer service is key. She is also the second woman to be president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in its 103-year history. Famous for her work for Danone, Evian, Air France and McDonald's, Erra also founded the French agency BETC. According to Gunn Report, BETC became the second most creative agency in the world in just 15 years. Since joining the agency in 1991, he transformed Xerox from The Copier Company to The Document Company.
Sawyer has worked at Deutsch for 23 years, helping the agency grow from 50 people to more than 1,000 and oversees Deutsch NY, Deutsch LA, Lowe Roche Toronto and Lowe Healthcare. Lazarus recently explained in Advertising Week that she enrolled in business school in the 1960s in the hope that having an MBA would exclude her from a job as a typist. She is also one of the few female Ogilvy executives (perhaps the only one) to have received a haircut from Emil Vaessen, the in-house male barber whom David Ogilvy recruited in the 1960s. Vaessen told us years ago that he touched Lazarus's hair exactly once. If he had stayed in the position, it would certainly be our No.
1 choice. In 1910 J. Walter Thompson Agency launched its “Women's Editorial Department” headed by writer and feminist Helen Lansdowne Resor. This group of women prided themselves on augmenting their product descriptions with creative and engaging phrases, specifically seeking to attract the “modern woman” with ads such as a Pond's Vanishing Cream spot with a woman in shirtsleeves playing on a golf course. Walter Thompson inspired more and more women to enter the advertising game throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and in 1949 McCann Erickson promoted 4 women to vice president positions. In 19y Wells became the first woman to run a major advertising agency which was known as Wells Rich Greene. In 1970 Barbara Proctor founded Proctor & Gamble as a reaction to a failure by other firms to effectively market to African-American communities, becoming the first black woman to own and operate her own advertising agency. She Runs It is a collective of professional women in marketing and advertising originally founded as Advertising Women of New York in 1912 as a rebuttal to an all-male Advertising League.
Now She Runs It hosts conferences, seminars, mentor pairings, leadership training programs for female advertising employees at all professional levels. The 4A is another nonprofit group that focuses on creative collaboration between advertising firms with an executive director and numerous women within its leadership. If your company joins you can expect invitations to industry-focused events, use The 4A networking resources and more. The 3% Movement was created with an aim to combat “only 3% of creative marketing managers are women” problem by hosting 2-day conferences specifically designed for this purpose across cities throughout the year along with implementing agency consulting programs and maintaining an online community of advertising professionals who identify women. Our list of 10 influential women in marketing showcases creativity from leaders like Cheryl McCants at AT&T or Dara Treseder at Carbon who are making waves in their respective fields. We also have She was also Marketing Director at Sanrio Global Limited and Global Marketing Director for Hello Kitty responsible for influencer outreach and events, digital marketing and social media campaigns among other things who is also co-hosting The Sustainability Influenced podcast.
