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Changemaking Creative with Jayshree Viswanathan
38 Plays1 year ago
Jayshree shares her unique insight into changemaking creative; from some impactful projects she's been a part of, through to her experience as President of SheSays.
Your hosts for this episode were Marloes Scheffers, Creative Director in Europe and Hannah Quick, Associate Creative Director in New York.
It was created and produced by Hill & Knowlton's Leah Taub, Paolo Rayco, Maite Moreau and Hannah Quick.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
as women we're conditioned to always be helpful and be efficient and to be you know yes people all the time and that is definitely something I have been guilty of
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode three of the Spark Podcast. Today we have a wonderful guest who has just finished a stint at Meta, but was also the proud president of the organization, she says. In this episode, Jay Shree talks to Marlo Scheffer's creative director in Europe, and me, Hannah Quick, ACD in New York, about some of the change-making creative that she has been a part of, as well as some of the key things she's learned from her career so far. Unexpectedly, she also gives us some insight into the contents of her fridge.
Marlo's Career Journey and Advertising Entry
00:00:52
Speaker
Nice to meet you, J3. So my name is Malus Scafers, working at Helen Alton as creative director for Europe. Really lovely to have you here on this podcast today. And I'm looking forward to speak to you about change making creative. When it comes to your career, you've done some amazing things. Would you talk us through a bit of that?
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, I'd love to. So I've been in agency most of my career, but I've been doing quite a lot of hopping around in recent years. So I've actually just recently wrapped a long-term contract at Meta, otherwise known as Facebook.
00:01:31
Speaker
And I've actually been freelancing with Dishoom. They're an Indian restaurant chain and they're based on the concept of Irani cafes in Mumbai. So that's been really fun and just a completely different set of creative muscles that are being worked now. So I've been really enjoying it and it's been really fun. The team are great. So I am a big fan of Dishoom. Everyone loves Dishoom.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, I can totally relate when you say you share your freelance experience because I feel it's always so wonderful like you're able to stretch different creative muscles freelancing because one moment you must have been in a meta world and in the next moment you work directly with clients and it's always something different. And so yeah, that sounds really super exciting. It's really fun.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah. Can you tell us a bit more about this and how did you start out on this journey? If I'm honest, it was complete fluke.
00:02:38
Speaker
I didn't know that advertising was an industry that I wanted to work in, I didn't know copywriting was a career that I could be in. When I was graduating my options that my career advisor gave me was librarian and teacher and there's nothing wrong with either of those professions but I just did not see myself in them so I really didn't know what I was going to be doing when I left and I ended up
00:03:05
Speaker
Firstly just working with a couple of friends on some short films and then I got a job working on comms for a small charity. From there I basically then started looking for actual copywriting jobs but then from there I've been lucky to kind of move around so
00:03:23
Speaker
I did an internship at Google Zoo which was their internal agency so it's kind of a funny start because the last gig I did was very similar to that and then I went to what was called FCB Inferno but it's now called FCB London and I've also been at Ogilvy before that so yeah I've bounced around quite a bit but I've been really lucky because like I said I didn't even know
00:03:45
Speaker
half of these places existed before I started the career really. Thank you, that's wonderful hearing more about your experience and how it all started.
Leadership and Community Building
00:03:55
Speaker
Can you also tell us, because we know that you also are a Google rare leadership graduate, how has this leadership program influenced your approach to leadership?
00:04:09
Speaker
I honestly, I just think the Google rare program is so brilliant. Like I, I remember I just applied because I happened to see online, but I didn't really think about it. And what was really nice about it, surprising, but nice about it was that as much as it was self-development, it was also a bit like therapy actually. Um, because it was really, really quickly, it became this kind of self safe space where people could be themselves and share really personal insights about who they were.
00:04:37
Speaker
And that's really the essence of Google rare. It's recognizing that everyone's different and they have all these unique qualities and actually those things are what make you a good leader. And it just really helps to reframe that, I guess that perception that leadership only has to look or act a certain way. That's really beautiful. How do you see it intersecting with your role in like driving change in the creative industries? I suppose the intersection for me is that
00:05:07
Speaker
By seeing myself as unconventional material for leadership, it, I guess, strengthened my resolve and my ability to see my own value and also allowed me to recognise other people because you sort of find other less confident people or less traditional people that you sort of are drawn to each other and then you become your own kind of little community and then collectively you can stand
00:05:37
Speaker
up and show people that are coming up that they also have the potential to be unconventional leaders and I think it just that helps to drive change because a lot of change comes from being visible and seeing other people that are like you or have the same beliefs as you so I think that everyone is different and actually the strengths
00:05:58
Speaker
that we all have are also the things that make us different from each other and that's okay. Thank you. I love the way you approached this. I think we would all love to have more female sort of leadership role models in our everyday day-to
Impactful Campaigns and Industry Change
00:06:14
Speaker
-day jobs. Also, could you share an example of a campaign that you believe has made positive impacts? Yeah, I think it's important to say as well that impact doesn't always have to be
00:06:28
Speaker
like worthy because I think nowadays there's a lot of conversation about purpose and responsibility, which I think is really important. But I think sometimes the thing about campaigns needing to have impact gets caught up in the need for advertising to be more responsible than it has been in previous years. So one example that fits both in terms of responsibility and
00:06:52
Speaker
change making and impact is by Bodyform or Libres, their campaign from some years ago called Blood Normal. I just absolutely love that. As soon as it came out, I just thought it was incredible because up until that point, it sounds crazy, but no kind of period ads had ever shown like blood, red coloured liquid for blood. It was always this kind of sanitised blue, which is ridiculous, right? Because you're like,
00:07:21
Speaker
half the population of the planet are going through this cycle every month but yet they have never seen the truth of that being represented on TV or in any sort of public medium. But I think the bigger change and impact it had was just about reframing the conversation around periods and menstruation and I think we're starting to see the kind of downward trickle of that now because
00:07:47
Speaker
I think it's Sainsbury's recently. In the UK has rebranded their aisle for what was formerly called sanitary products to period products, which is a small thing. But I do think it was one of the changes that has been sparked by campaigns like this, by kind of bringing periods of menstruation into the mainstream and into conversation.
00:08:11
Speaker
I remember seeing that and it really, it is super bold and it shouldn't be so unique either, like it should be the norm. One thing I've been meaning to ask, just because it's something that I was engaged with very much so in London, I had a mentor.
00:08:28
Speaker
I know you were a big part of She Says. I'd love it, Jai Sri, if you could give us a bit of an intro as to what She Says is for those that don't know what your role was in that. Yeah, I'd love to dig into that a little if we can. So She Says, for anyone that doesn't know, is an organisation. They're global and essentially it was set up by two incredible women, Ali and Laura.
00:08:54
Speaker
who at that time were one of the very few women in the advertising and creative industries and they just wanted to set up a community for other women like them who
00:09:07
Speaker
didn't really feel accepted and didn't really feel like they had a place to go or a community to lean on. So I came on initially just as part of the committee and as part of the London committee, but then two years ago now, was it last year? I'm losing track of time, but I think it was a year ago now, almost two.
00:09:27
Speaker
I was invited and approached by them to come on as the co-president as she says for the London chapter which is a huge honour and privilege for an organisation that is just so well known within the industry and what they do is they put on loads of events and do campaigns and just generally provide resources and support
00:09:48
Speaker
for women and non-binary people in the industry who maybe are starting out or maybe just feel alone and need somewhere to come and congregate and feel community. So I think the community aspect is probably one of the reasons that it's been going strong for 15 years.
Motherhood and Career Challenges
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah. I think as an industry, we've, we've come a long way and you definitely see a lot more female and non-binary creatives in our industry, but it's still definitely not diverse enough. And I imagine there must've been some really great insights working on, on GSA as being part of those conversations, Jay Shree. I don't know if you can share any, any learnings from that experience that kind of were shocking or maybe like opened your eyes to things, or maybe it was just a confirmation of.
00:10:37
Speaker
I think it's a bit of both, honestly. I think there is definitely more work to be done. I think there are definitely even within, you know, because not no, no woman is the same as another. And, you know, especially in the creative industries, we're all we're sort of the same with sort of doing the same jobs, but it's not exactly the same because, you know, if you're a designer, your experience is different to a copywriter is different to a producer, but also one one other kind of
00:11:05
Speaker
broad scale split that we're starting to notice, especially as
00:11:10
Speaker
more creatives are progressing in their careers is like motherhood and parenthood. And there's a, there definitely feels like there's a big gulf between like women and people in the community who have children and those who don't, because often what happens is that women come back and they feel like all their progress has sort of been erased and they're starting over at zero again. And that I think was really illuminating because when I had come on board as co-president
00:11:40
Speaker
it was shortly after the pandemic had finally sort of, or like the restrictions, the lockdown restrictions had finally lifted. And so people had been out of the loop socially for two years anyway. And then on top of that, many of the people that were coming back to the community had also had children. So there was just like this overwhelming sense of just detachment. And so one of the events that we did was focused around motherhood and, you know,
00:12:07
Speaker
just sort of talking about caring responsibilities, which felt like an important topic to talk about because it rarely sort of gets a look in. And I guess one of the other challenges is that any event that's sort of labeled as a women's event or a sort of open like event for people from other genders, they won't typically be attended by men and ultimately
00:12:35
Speaker
because men are still the ones in the most influential positions. By doing that, it kind of limits the change and potential for future development.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think allyship is so, so important. Right back in, I would love to also hear from you and your perspective how you think that the industry can enhance authenticity in campaigns to really better reflect diverse voices and perspectives.
Diversity in Creative Campaigns
00:13:09
Speaker
We sort of touched on it already, but I definitely believe like a core part of authenticity comes from having
00:13:17
Speaker
authentic voices and people and influences in the room as work is being made and I mean that in all respects you know like not just the people who are coming up with the idea but the people who are framing it you know the camera people the lighting people the the people that are directing it the people that are dressing the set like all of those things are so important because there are so many like nuances to everyone's like lived experience and you know to
00:13:47
Speaker
to not have people in the room, those gaps in knowledge immediately start to show. Just as a last question, what I'm very curious about is as a female leader, do you have one unique challenge that you faced and how did you overcome this?
Managing Creative Workload
00:14:12
Speaker
I think one of the, I don't think sadly it's unique to me, but I think it is something that a lot, the more I talk about it, the more I hear other people and particularly other women relating to is it doesn't pay to be
00:14:31
Speaker
doesn't pay to be to be good at your job sometimes because actually if people think that you're good and you can handle it they sort of overload you i don't think there's ever been a point at which someone has said to me do you know what you've really smashed it on this project or this brief we're going to give you a rest we're going to kind of reward you by letting you just sort of cool your heels a bit
00:14:54
Speaker
actually what actually happens is that they pile more work on you and it's almost seen as like this anti-reward in my mind anyway because when you've really you know smashed it on a project you want the chance to just
00:15:09
Speaker
relax but actually what ends up happening is that you end up being more busy because your sort of reputation precedes you and so I think that's been a real challenge because it's kind of forced me to re-wire my own thinking because I think I could be wrong but I think societally, socially as women we're conditioned to always be helpful and be efficient and to be you know
00:15:38
Speaker
yes people all the time and that is definitely something I have been guilty of for most of my career and so now actually I'm trying to say no more, I'm trying to say thank you for the compliments on the last job that I did but actually I don't want to take on any more work at this point or can I be put onto something a little quieter until I recover my energy and then
00:16:03
Speaker
come back a bit more lively. Whereas I think you're sort of, at least my conditioning tells me that I need to say yes and be agreeable to everything all the time. And it's taken quite a lot of work to sort of push back against that impulse.
00:16:24
Speaker
The power of saying no, that is something very powerful. I also wonder if there's something around the leaders too, being aware of that. As a leader, you're responsible for your team and their time and their wellness and happiness and their creatives. And you have to nurture that. And when they are super busy and stretched, you're definitely not going to get the most creative ideas. When we talk about support, supporting our teams to have that time,
00:16:52
Speaker
they need to do a good job. The work will only benefit. Let's do less, but do it better. Yeah. But also just recognising that the reward for good work is not more work, it's rest. It's actually counterintuitive to get a person that you think is really good even busier because actually their output is going to suffer. So yeah, the reward for good work is not more work.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen it so often, even in myself, like I think when you are pushed, you maybe drop the ball or the work isn't as strong and then you start to question yourself and doubt yourself, but it's not that you aren't good at what you do, you're just doing too much. Yeah, definitely. And then obviously that leads to burnout or like you say, self-doubt and self-esteem issues. So I think it's a fine balance, but I think the way to manage that is actually by
00:17:49
Speaker
pushing back against what maybe socially you're expected to do and say no instead of saying, yeah, of course, no problem. Because that that's definitely something I am very, very instinctively aware of now. And I try to, yeah, try to try to unwire that part of my brain.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes, and us creatives are so important, this self-care. If you want to be top of your game, you have to feel top of your game, you have to feel inspired, and you can only do that when you're well rested.
Self-Care and Creativity
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, like also it's a combination of relaxation like you mentioned, like maybe like after what I used to do after I used to freelance and after a very intense job like working on pitches I would like take some time off and you know really get immersed in culture for example in a complete unknown country and I would come back and I
00:18:47
Speaker
would be able to do my job even better. So, yeah, I think even though, you know, I sometimes have missed out on great work opportunities, but yeah, that's important. You cannot, you cannot always say, yeah, sometimes you have to say no to, to be better. Can you give us one piece of advice to a young woman or non-binary person starting out their career in the creative industry?
Advice for Young Creatives
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah of course, I would say from my experience it's super important to find your tribe or your community. I just think that finding the people that see you for who you truly are is like rocket fuel. There's that famous quote which says something like if you want to go fast you go alone but if you want to go far you have to go together and I really believe that to be true with this kind of job because
00:19:40
Speaker
We are super sensitive and quite self-critical as creative people, I think. And that is just amplified when you're from a minority of any kind. And so I just think it can be quite lonely and it's really easy for that self-doubt to set in. So definitely I would say find the people that you get along with and that really get you. That is so relatable. Setting up Spark has been really meaningful to me in that I've met some really amazing
00:20:10
Speaker
women around the world and I love our calls where we all get to come together in Marlowe so you can probably speak to this too because we're able to just be really vulnerable and real and share our experiences from
00:20:23
Speaker
a creative perspective from a female perspective and like what's going on in the world perspective too. And we can all help each other and share that and be real with each other and create a bit of a community. And I think for me personally, it's done so much more of that than I ever expected it to. Yeah. I could hardly understand why.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yes, and thank you. I also completely understand where you're coming from, J3. And with that in mind, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more on where we can find or follow you. Yeah, I mean, I am actually really bad at sharing my own work and being present online, but my handle on Instagram is misviz, so that's M-I-Z-V-I-S.
Creative Insights and Personal Tidbits
00:21:14
Speaker
Last episode we spoke to Cass Howe, she's the founder of agency Howe & Howe and she left you a wonderful question and the question is what does the inside of your fridge look like? This is a great question and I'm going to answer it in the style of like a school report you know when you go to meet your teacher for parents evening and they say blah blah blah so what I'm going to say is
00:21:40
Speaker
my fridge shows promise, but could do better. Because it has all the beginnings of, you know, a good meal, but it hasn't quite been realised yet. I've got some vegetables, I've got a lot of condiments, because I love condiments, but they haven't quite achieved their culinary potential. So hopefully I'm looking forward to rectifying that this weekend. I love the creative approach to that, Jay Shree. And the fact that you've got all the pieces, you've got all the makings of,
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, the potential is there, but I feel like we need to make time to serve up the real thing. So it's funny, when we spoke to Kat Howe about that question, I think immediately when she asked it, Lucy and I were like, oh, so it's like what's in your fridge in terms of the food? That's where my mind went anyway. Whatever it is that you keep in your fridge, it will give you an insight into their taste or their eating habits. But actually, she was like, no, it's not just that,
00:22:35
Speaker
it gives you an insight into their personality a little bit. And I think the way you answered that does exactly that. I think Kat mentioned when she asked someone once, they were like,
00:22:44
Speaker
I think it was a producer of hers. She was like, it was super organized. Everything's in Tupperware, chopped up, ready to go. And that told her that that person was really organized. Whereas you're probably a very hopeful person, very positive, very creative. Optimistic, quietly optimistic is what I would say. It's the state of my fridge right now. I love that. That's amazing. We would love also to know, like, what's a piece of work, creative work, are you most proud of?
00:23:10
Speaker
This is such a difficult question to answer, I think, because it's like choosing your favourite book or choosing your favourite child or, you know, I don't have children. I have many favourite books, though. But I would say that the answer varies often, depending on, I suppose, what element of the campaign works and what are your reasons for feeling close to that piece of work are.
00:23:33
Speaker
at this point one of my favourites is still a campaign that I did for Battersea Cats and Dogs. It was actually during the pandemic it was a campaign that we had to get people to consider Battersea Cats and Dogs for because it was around the time that people were being told that they would need to come back to the office after I think yeah nine months or something in lockdown and in that time most people I know had gone out and bought themselves a
00:24:01
Speaker
a pet, like a pandemic pet. And so then when the government restrictions were starting to potentially be lifted, people were worried about what they would do with that pet because they no longer would be at home to take care of them. So Battersea were anticipating a big influx of animals basically being sold online or otherwise abandoned. So they wanted us to kind of put together
00:24:28
Speaker
campaign that would sort of preempt that and give people a bit of a signpost to say hey Battersea is here to take your pet if you can't look after them in a really nice non-judgmental way which I thought was really important because I don't know if you know but in the UK certainly pets are very much seen as children so there's a lot of guilt that comes with abandoning a pet because it's seen as leaving behind a family member
00:24:53
Speaker
So this was kind of really timely and really emotional, really quite poignant. And so it was really cool to be part of a campaign that felt like it was of the time and could not have been made at any other point.
00:25:07
Speaker
Oh, wow. That's lovely to hear. And also very much in line with what our topic is today, which is change making creative. And I'm sure this made a big change, especially for the dogs in Betta Sea. So that's a very lovely example. Do you have dogs yourself? I sadly don't. I don't have any pets right now. But at some point in the future, I would love to have a sausage dog because they're my favorite.
00:25:34
Speaker
I think that is a great note to end on. I'm also really conscious if we keep talking, which I feel like I could forever, because this has been fascinating and inspiring. Yeah, that will bring us to the end of another Spark episode. Well, thank you so much, Jaishree, for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's been brilliant.
00:26:00
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to connect with J Street and see what else she's been up to, you can find her on LinkedIn. We will include a link in the description of this episode.