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Creative Equity with Cat How
151 Plays1 year ago
Cat How from How&How chats with Natasha Smith-Langridge and Lucy Doolan, about creative equity. In particular the unique approach her branding agency has on diversity and fairness.
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Transcript
Innovate and Addressing Pay Gap
00:00:00
Speaker
Either do something that's never been done before or do something that's better than everyone else. With our agency, I thought, well, loads of branding agencies out there, of course, but perhaps we can do an agency that's better than everyone else in the sense that we are completely transparent and we mitigate this pay gap in some way, or we're at least helping find a solution.
00:00:23
Speaker
This
Podcast Introduction
00:00:24
Speaker
is a podcast brought to you by Spark, the global community for female and non-binary creatives at communications agency Hill and Knowlton. I'm Tash, senior presentation designer in our London office, and I'll be hosting this episode alongside Lucy Doolan, creator director also in London.
Introducing Kat Howe and Topics
00:00:39
Speaker
Today, we're speaking to the amazing Kat Howe, founder and ECD of branding agency Howe now. Kat has an interesting road into design, starting out as an e-commerce entrepreneur before co-founding her agency with husband, Rog in 2020.
00:00:51
Speaker
We
Creative Equity and Parenthood
00:00:52
Speaker
spoke about how creative equity at How and How means complete salary transparency, what it's like co-owning an agency with your partner, and being a role model and mum to kids whilst running your own agency. How and How's approach diversity is truly unique in Kat's passion for creativity and a culture of fairness unflinching. We love talking with her and we hope you enjoy the episode as much as we did. Thank you so much, Kat, for taking the time to chat to us today.
Founding How and How
00:01:16
Speaker
Would you be able to tell us a little bit about your agency How and How and
00:01:20
Speaker
your role there and your responsibilities, et cetera. Sure. Thanks for having me, Lucy and team. My agency is called How and How. I'm Kat Howe. I'm a co-founder and creative director. My agency is about three years old. So it's set up in the height of the pandemic. And I think
00:01:38
Speaker
We founded it with a clear vision to be a new breed of branding agency basically. Everyone thinks that obviously, but for us it was a big thing. We are a very fiercely ambitious team. We all sort of want to deliver beautiful work for clients as well as the planet. I think that's a key thing for us. And as an agency, I think we're always striving towards
00:01:56
Speaker
culture of fairness and openness and transparency and gender equality. That sought to find us as an agency. And every time we do an agency roundup at the end of the week, I always tell everyone that what we're striving towards is to create the best environment for creating the best environmental work. I lead a team of designers. So my role in CDE is, as we all know, trying to make words and images align and dealing with clients and dealing with designers. And it's a tricky one, but I love it. Being a founder as well can be very rewarding, but can also be
00:02:26
Speaker
Super difficult. In a rather long nutshell, that's it. Well, it sounds like you're really passionate about what you do, but you started your career as a journalist and e-commerce entrepreneur. What made you make that switch to design? I've
Transition from Journalism to Design
00:02:40
Speaker
always been quite creative, I think. I was always drawing a lot in primary school. I was always drawing.
00:02:45
Speaker
started to draw more and more at secondary school then I was being more expressive with it and then it got to a juncture for our university and perhaps I listened to my dad he was like read English at university do something that will get your job afterwards don't do arts I was really I was I was torn between both I was going to either do fine art or read English at uni I went and did English and I was using creativity more as a medium then and I used it for the content as well and I was always writing about art and my tutors thought I was just
00:03:15
Speaker
was in the wrong course, basically. So then I went into journalism and became an art critic. I was using words to, as a medium again, but to criticise the work of others. And I think that really jarred with me because I thought, well, I'm not actually doing the work myself. We moved to Australia and I did a three month course and then I went straight into agency world.
00:03:35
Speaker
And completely, like really learned the hard way, like did some massive, massive, I won't swear on here, but like, I did, I did a lot of mistakes and I created director at the time were incredibly patient. And then I got into Martin's series to do my MA in communication design.
00:03:52
Speaker
I think it was then I realised I did want to communicate more, not critique the work of others and actually use design to tell the story and not just the words. So it's a bit roundabout, but it's always led me back to this point now where I feel like, right, all this combination of experience has just led to this. They all sort of benefit each other as well. I'm sure all of those separate things sort of prop each other up.
00:04:15
Speaker
How do you see the relationship of the sector to creative equity? Does that feed into anything you've seen or witnessed or feel about the industry right now?
Gender Disparities in Creative Industry
00:04:24
Speaker
The industry right now has a really long way to go. Only 0.01% of agencies are owned by women, 17% of creatives are women and black and mixed-race female creatives. There are a tiny, tiny percentage of them in leadership roles as well. The gender pay gap is a massive problem here. It's a culture of working late and
00:04:42
Speaker
getting bonuses if your voice is the loudest. And I think sadly at the moment, this benefits men more as women still by and large, shuttled with childcare and perhaps feel less like their voice can be heard. Yeah, there's a really interesting quote by Cunaraji, Rai Jamakas, if I'm doing my Dutch correctly. And it's a quote I always liked the reference because I think it's quite true. In a creative industry that is designed by men around the needs of men, it's no surprise that very few female creative leaders make it to the top of the creative tree.
00:05:12
Speaker
And so I think that's like a root of the problem. And I think having to restructure a structure that's been built for so long around certain needs of certain people is going to take a lot of work.
00:05:25
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that quote is really powerful and sort of summarises that so well. Do you think it's important then to get to that stage where creative equity is embedded in businesses and contributes to successful work, impactful work?
Aligning Brand Values and Creative Equity
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, massively important. And if you want to put like a two different sorts of hat on, I mean, from a from a professional level, certainly more and more brands are wanting to align with companies who share their same values. And now, like something we talk about
00:05:49
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that the brands we create are not just signifiers of a quality and a value but they are vessels now of meaning and values. That's an evolution to where we were even five years ago.
00:06:00
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So value alignment is incredibly important for companies. And if you think about it, if you're also going to be working with a company or an agency, for example, for like many months on a rebrand and even longer, if you're also doing website and Dev like we do, it's important to make sure that that value relationship is there. And it means that if we're able to communicate that we have creative equity on a professional level, it helps female founders find us or it helps us to find them. Showing what you care about those things is also good
00:06:27
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for finding the people who also care about those things. So it gets the relationship off to a good start essentially. From a team level and an employer perspective, the more equity you can bring to your team, the more you can foster loyalty in your employees, particularly female ones who just appreciate that someone's actually thinking about it and trying to come up with a system in the process that can actually start to change some sort of really, really embedded system that we've got. So if you can also show that to your team,
00:06:57
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then people come to you and we've been finding that a lot. The more we've communicated about our values from an employer branding perspective, the more we're having more and more people and more and more designers approach us who want that and are aligned with that too. So inspiring. And I know you talk about this culture of ultimate fairness. How does that kind of manifest day to day in your studio and with your team?
Implementing Fairness in Agency
00:07:21
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Yeah, so I suppose on a very granular level, day to day, juniors, when we have our design catch ups, always go first. It's just a way of making sure that they feel understood and it's not like a pecking order. And also we found that they tend to not speak up as much if some, you know, creative director or the director has spoken up before them and they tend to just sort of match their
00:07:41
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opinions to that person in a higher position. So they always go first, give them some space and some some freedom to do that. So we'll be court pending at the moment as well. So a lot of our policies have also been designed to bring fairness to the office. Things like a breastfeeding policy we now have, which I didn't even realise, you know, and I'm a mum of two, one of the policies you have to have is the breastfeeding one too, where a breastfeeding mum can have a certain number of hours a day or
00:08:07
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example, we've got one of our producers is just this back from Natalie, and she can leave a couple of hours early every day. So she has more time, you know, to breastfeed or to, you know, sort of stuff out around the child. So that's a very granular day to day level, I suppose, more top line, we have a transparent tiered salary system. I also set up a company with my husband, co CEO as well. All our decisions are made completely fair and equal between us. We're not trying to be
00:08:33
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better, we just want equality. It's good to have those two sides and that's a bit more sort of holistic view. You've mentioned the gender pay gap and I know that Campaign Live, I think they reported in April this year that women
00:08:48
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in permanent roles in the creative industry continue to be paid less than their male counterparts. And they actually earn, I think it's £9,680 less on average a year.
Salary Transparency and Pay Gap
00:09:00
Speaker
I mean, that's really interesting, the sort of complete transparency around salary that you have. I don't think I've ever worked at an agency that's been transparent. And I imagine it's got pros and cons. And I'm just really interested and curious to sort of hear how that's gone for you.
00:09:20
Speaker
Part of that was because we are so young and because we founded ourselves relatively recently, three years ago. One of our founding ideas and values as well was this idea, either do something that's never been done before or do something that's better than everyone else. And with our agency, I thought, well, loads of branding agencies out there, of course, but perhaps we can do an agency that's better than everyone else in the sense that we are completely transparent and we mitigate this pay gap in some way, or we're at least helping
00:09:43
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I don't know anyone else either, really, who's doing it.
00:09:46
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find a solution. So yeah I mean I suppose what inspired it was I just also just didn't quite understand that you know people would get really far down in job applications and or interviews and be like second or third into you and have no idea what the salary was.
00:10:00
Speaker
I've got two sisters who work in, one's a doctor and one works in public health. And my younger sister who works in public health would just have to guess that you'd be applying completely blind and then you'd feel there's an extra layer of tension to your job interview she's telling me because you have to really know how much you're worth. But how do you know that if you don't know, if you don't have other parameters? So yeah, we wanted just to try and think about things differently. And that helped because everyone joining knew that was the deal because it can be really difficult. The pros are
00:10:29
Speaker
everyone feels it's very egalitarian, we have a spreadsheet, you can see exactly all the tiers, they're all laid out from from intern to my role as founder, everyone's robs and their salaries are there, showing even my stock options and things like that. So it's completely, completely transparent. And every year we have a financial review, we show everyone all the finances of the company, like ins outs, how much we spent on freelancers, you know, profit loss, and just to give people that understanding of like, what's happening, I think
00:10:59
Speaker
The pros are you get people, especially women who are just like, wow, I never knew that I could be in a place where now I just pay the same as a guy because there's all that worry that someone could have a louder voice and could just push more and then get more money as a result. There are cons, which means that obviously our competitors know exactly how much work we're paying people.
00:11:18
Speaker
Which is a bit annoying. Some people just don't like it. Talking about salaries is a bit uncomfortable, especially us Brits as well. It's a bit like, oh, God, you know, some people don't like it. That is a problem. But I think the openness from the outside is very important to communicate to people who are applying for roles with us. And if you're not if you're not cool with that, then maybe you're not quite right for us. You know, we did actually ask everyone before we did it, like, are you cool with this? And everyone's like, great idea. So that's that's good.
00:11:44
Speaker
And it does mean sometimes we have really good people for certain roles, they tend to be guys, and I don't want to stereotype, but they tend to be who come in, all guns blazing and like, well, yeah, obviously, yeah, you've got this system, but you know, I'm, I'm worth more. We always have to say it's like non-negotiable. Sorry. Otherwise, if you break that, then the horses fall apart. So you have to sometimes make this difficult decisions where you just have to say, well,
00:12:09
Speaker
no, this is just how much it is. So take it or leave it. So there are pros and cons, but I'd say that there are more pros than cons. It means that people know where the next step is as well, because there's sometimes a bit, I think, unknown if you're a mid, for example, so our mid tiers are from 40 for a lower mid, entry and level mid, then you have like a mid at 45, and then you have like upper mid at 50, then senior start at 55, and then you go to D, you know, and so there it is.
00:12:37
Speaker
And that these tiers change, but when whenever we change a tier, the whole system always goes up by an incremental amount of twos. They're not static, but when we do change them, then everyone gets changed up at the same time. It's so refreshing. I think a lot of people have experienced gatekeeping in terms of how you get to the next level and all that stuff. And I think especially women find it hard to push and fight for what they think there were.
00:13:02
Speaker
You mentioned earlier that you co-founded How and How with your husband. I know you said it was very like 50-50 equal. Have you found that gender has played a part at all? How's the dynamic? You know, everyone wants to know what's, what's happening behind the scenes.
Co-founding with Husband
00:13:19
Speaker
We have made it work. I suppose we've had.
00:13:21
Speaker
a few crash courses in the other businesses that we've run, which is helped us iron out that we both have to have very, very separate roles. I was judging recently with this lovely couple called Felipe and Leo Portoja, who are a big agency in New York. And we were talking about working with your husbands. And if it works, it's great. I think from my side, I am more aware of nuances and sensitivities, you know,
00:13:43
Speaker
maybe buy so and so a bunch of flowers because she's had a bit of a crappy day or I don't know like the thoughts and sensitivities which are not necessarily around the job itself. And I think some members of the team as well have joined us because they actually did want to work with a female founder and creative director. So actually, that's more of a literal part my gender did play. But I think yeah, together with him, it's lucky we have a very different, you know, way of thinking head and heart. He's more like finances and sales and I'm more, you know, the creative and I think
00:14:13
Speaker
Thankfully that's worked, but then that's the equity again where we have had to make it more balanced. Can you see any challenges for your approach and your unique sort of initiatives to be rolled out across more agencies or do you think that everybody should be embracing the ambitions that you have? Increasing the diversity in the sector in terms of increasing diversity. One of the challenges I think for that is that
00:14:38
Speaker
In the creative industry as a whole, it's quite, quite a lot of it is around experience. If you're always kept in the same role, for example, as a woman, because a man speaks more loudly than you, you can just be stuck and not get the experience you need in order to progress. And I think one thing we've actually found, and this is a bit of a segue, but we've actually found that when we've got job ads up,
00:14:59
Speaker
men by and large they tend to always go for jobs that they're under qualified for so always they're punching above their weight and the women we find tend to not do this or be more aware or realistic which is part of the reason why we try and also hire people or promote people before they ask because we feel that's a responsible thing to do because you can't rely on someone's gender to dictate how far they can go or if they can get a job of a higher tier than someone else. I think
00:15:22
Speaker
that's a problem because if you're kept somewhere, if you have a lot of male-dominated senior tiers as well, then you have other things that creep in. A man might speak more loudly than a woman, for example. A man might say, well, maybe I won't promote her because she might have a kid soon and it might be unintentional bias, but it could still be there. So I think that's a problem and that could hamper experience. And I think the other thing is, based on experience, if you do dip out of work for a year or so to have a kid,
00:15:51
Speaker
then you're not on the tools as much. And again, childcare still falls heavily on women.
00:15:57
Speaker
and returning to work is a lot more difficult. Well, it takes longer. So this can affect your performance as well. Always learning, always iterating, you know, Figma, no one knew what that was a couple of years ago now. It's like, what was that archaic program in design? So I think if you're out with the system where it's all about innovation and new things and new ways of, I don't know, doing certain brush effects or like, it's always about newness and creating.
00:16:22
Speaker
if you're out of the loop for a bit, then that can also affect it. So that's that's a real problem. But in terms of embracing the benefits of diversity, I think the more diverse your workforce, the more you know, the 360 view you have of everything, there's huge benefits of having more diversity in your team, you know, women are more detail orientated, arguably, there are definitely definitely different things that both genders can bring to the table, you know, and obviously, if you have more of an equal share of those, then you know, you're a more well rounded company.
Diversity and Profitability
00:16:49
Speaker
Do you think there's a loop between profitability of businesses and having diverse teams? Yeah, absolutely. It would be great if someone did a study on that. I'm sure someone has, but it does make business sense, which is why I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more often and people don't have more of a very conscious hiring policy. So we have
00:17:09
Speaker
a policy which is where there has to be an equal amount of male, female, non gender specific when we take people into the shortlist for a job. And I had someone on LinkedIn the other day being like, does that mean that if I was a woman, I'd get the job or and I was like, no, it means that we have. Thank you for your feedback. But it means that we make sure if there are five guys, we have to have at least five women, there's always got to be some
00:17:31
Speaker
proportionate representation of each category. And it could be that the right person in that job happens to be a man, or it could be that the right person happens to be a woman. I mean, you spoke about motherhood, and obviously, it's one of the biggest barriers, I think, for women, particularly getting into more senior creative roles. How old are your kids out of interest? And how do you find that balance in the juggle? My son, Rolo, is nine, and my daughter, Santi, is going to be seven next week.
00:17:56
Speaker
I try and teach them, I mean, they always see me working and I've got them actually got them tools already. It's like fake
Balancing Motherhood and Career
00:18:02
Speaker
laptop made out of cardboard. I think it's really important for them to see I work very hard as does my husband. And so they understand that I think it's important for them to see the sacrifices have to be made, but sometimes it can be really difficult. I do a lot of traveling that can't always come with me, obviously.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's been a really good lens and I think also having them with my husband means that we can also be a bit more sensitive to how we can make the business more sensitive as well for parents and particularly mums. It's definitely helped to soften my view and make us make more humane decisions about, you know, how to run the team.
00:18:38
Speaker
It's interesting. I'm reflecting back. It's quite a few years ago now, but I had a fantastic female mentor. And I remember saying to her, you know, she had two children and I said, I mean, I know it's almost impossible to have kids in this industry and be a creative director and sort of look to me and she's like, no, it's very possible. And it's just interesting that that's the kind of perception I had back then. It's fantastic to see you not only being a creative director, but founding a business, doing amazing work while having two kids. So.
00:19:08
Speaker
You can do it if you've got the drive, if you're organised about it and you know it becomes another part of life. I think ironically and running your own thing although it's very difficult in many aspects which many things would be under control and completely like blindside you. In other ways you do have a bit more control over like how you want to do things so it's a bit of
00:19:31
Speaker
a bit of both, more control than some aspects, how it's run and how it can be structured and less control of when things go wrong and team members and like, you know, stuff that you just don't expect. Studio flooding like we had the other day, which was a bit annoying, but you know, you just know that it will be fine. A lot of creative agencies and studios definitely push the boundaries in terms of like working hours and things don't they? So I guess it's a case of finding what works for you.
00:19:57
Speaker
You're
Future Vision and Personal Decisions
00:19:58
Speaker
smashing glass ceilings and I know that there's lots of firsts with how and how and you talk about this idea of dreaming the not yet and we are really curious to know what you're dreaming up for the future. Apart from hiring more women obviously, which is always the case. It depends on the role, it depends on the person for the role. But yeah I want to be dreaming so we're moving to LA in about five months so that's very much a combination of
00:20:21
Speaker
work and life coalescing and aligning. And the kids obviously really don't want to go, they love their school. So that's a very difficult decision to make because we know it's good for business. And then people say think about your kids, but we know in the long run, it will actually be really beneficial for them for their learning.
00:20:41
Speaker
That is definitely dreaming the not yet and all the, all the things that you have to go through to get there, you know, making sure the different teams and different locations are fully set up to handle that us being founders being somewhere else, you know, so there's, you know, lots of repercussions. Yeah. You always have to be thinking about the next thing in that respect. So that's going to be an exciting chapter. So the next section of questions is called quick fire. The first question is what piece of creative work are you most proud of?
00:21:11
Speaker
Well, obviously, you know, I love them all. They're all my my children in many ways. And there's no one I prefer of others. But, you know, you do have some favorites, obviously. And I think even though I talked about climate stuff, I think I would choose M, which is a
00:21:26
Speaker
was a female founder, Jenny Button, she's great, she's got this real buzz about her and she's got this real mission. And basically, M is a femtech revolutioniser, it's the world's first smart menstrual cup. And so it was designed by her and the next product designer from Dyson.
00:21:45
Speaker
And it basically gives you measurable data of menstrual blood and gives you all this accurate data about yourself and your body. And it's really, really cool piece of tech. And aside from it being all piece of tech, I love the fact it was female founded. I love the fact that the whole team who worked in it, we were all women. And the brand idea for it was also
00:22:04
Speaker
think really, really clean. It was called the brand idea was called capture wave and it was expressing this idea of being of not only like, literally one of the product features is like capturing menstrual blood, but it wasn't essentially built on that. The shape itself looks very wave like and this idea as well of being on like the cusp of the wave and new tech that was pioneering, but also like different hormonal waves and different emotional states you can feel as well during a period. So I think it had quite a lot of concepts wrapped into it and was
00:22:33
Speaker
these beautiful flow lines and palette was quite different. We chose that because bright purple has a signifying color, which is quite different in the space. There's quite a lot of pinks and soft colors. So we were quite bold as well with the palette and with typography. And I think the best thing is then the reaction of the client and Jenny was super happy. We went on to do more work with her.
00:22:56
Speaker
And she just said that we'd transformed her business in a way that she couldn't imagine. It's not just if it looks good, but obviously you want the result to be, to be good. We helped her with some investor decks as well for her to get more funding, which she's done. So just to feel like you are also helping with a project that you feel also aesthetically like hits the mark. Very cool. Okay. Second question. If you could give one piece of advice to a young woman starting out in her career in the creative industry, what would it be? I have
Advice for Young Women
00:23:24
Speaker
a few.
00:23:24
Speaker
bits of advice, which is a bit of a cheat, but, um, hopefully they all amount to one. So I suppose if you're starting out and there's something I do get asked a bit is I always try and be like, Oh, it's like catch them to do like, where, you know, how do I begin when I haven't got anything in my folio? And I always say that, you know, the most important thing is to make the work that you want to do and then just to do it. Cause the problem is there can be a lot of navel gazing at the beginning. Don't really know what we're doing. You don't have, you know, any work to show and it's just like trying.
00:23:53
Speaker
define what sort of work it is. Is it expressive? Is it more recessive? Is it beautiful and Swiss or whatever? Or is it dependent on like the sector that you want to work in? It's important almost to flesh out your folio, the self-initiated work that reflects the work you want to do in the future and then agencies then will take notice. And I suppose talking about folio, I would say it's really important to hustle as well. Self-initiated projects are always the most interesting for me. I was looking through lots of folios last night and I'm always really intrigued by it because
00:24:23
Speaker
you know at the beginning as well, what they're interested in, how typography is set, but not just that. Also, you know that there's no one else more senior above them directing it. So you know that those self-enriched projects are the most truest, truest form of that person's work and level. So definitely do loads of those. And I suppose the last bit of advice would be to know your worth.
00:24:45
Speaker
It's coming back to this idea of before, of that salary, transparency. And I think it's difficult when you first start out to know your worth and you have to find your way a bit, but never work for free. It's uncool to take an internship where you work for free now. It's just not acceptable anymore. So never work for a company who wants to get you to work for free when you've graduated. Fantastic advice. So the very last question that we have for you, Kat.
00:25:08
Speaker
and was actually left by our previous guests. So we had a lady called Marianne Admardatine, who is the CEO of H&K in Indonesia. So really interesting, fantastic creative. And this was her question.
00:25:21
Speaker
What's your opinion on initiatives based around creative equity and their impact on creating more purposeful work? I think initiatives are good, but I wonder if there has to be a more seismic perception shift, even things like men getting more paternity pay, you know, is that an initiative that can mean that women can come back to work sooner and for longer if they want to, or that initiative could
00:25:50
Speaker
actually work in the sense that it's literally giving money, which is probably a good thing to do. If the government owns that, there's initiatives which could be around training and that can certainly help. But I think
00:26:03
Speaker
We respect that. It's almost like it can only go so far. So I wonder if it's training or some tutoring, that sounds awful, but like even around this idea of training or senior executives about unconscious bias, you know, that would be a good initiative. Yeah, it depends on the initiative, but I think it has to be like less talk and more action or something, something that is actionable. Lastly, where can we find and follow you?
Agency's Social Media Presence
00:26:29
Speaker
you can find us physically in three locations in Lisbon, London and LA, but you can follow us on Instagram. Our handle is at how3 underscores the studio, which is really annoying. I really should have rethought of myself up and I really want to change it. I'm on LinkedIn. So we're only on LinkedIn on Instagram. Thank you so much, Kat. That has been super interesting. And thank you for your time. We really, really appreciate it.
00:26:54
Speaker
Just feel really inspired now. Lucy and I might go and start our own female-founded agency after that. Yeah. You did it. It's good. Enjoy the ride.
00:27:10
Speaker
If you'd like to connect with Kat or How and How, you can find her on LinkedIn as well as Instagram. We will add the relevant links in the description of this episode. This podcast was produced by Hannah Quick and myself, Lucy Doolan. We'd also like to thank Make Moreau for designing our wonderful cover art, Leah Taub for creating our jingle and doing the story editing, and Zoe Durham for assistant editing. And of course, thanks to everyone who's listened today. We really hope you enjoyed episode two of the Spark podcast.