In this exclusive interview I speak to Traecy Smith, director of diversity at the One Club and One Show Awards taking place in New York City this week, about professional development and the importance of properly training creatives on management and leadership.
Nurock: Traecy what does your role as director of diversity involve?
Traecy Smith
Smith: Thank you, first of all, for having me today, it’s so great to see you. As the director of diversity for the One Club, I’m in a very fortunate position where I get to influence change; necessary change in the industry. As you know, there are many efforts being made, some agencies are doing it better than others, to increase diversity in a natural, organic way and I think that my role is simply to help these agencies find this diverse talent and understand the importance of diversity. It’s incredibly crucial to our overall success in the industry. This is a very vibrant, creative, exciting industry to be in. I think that the industry and the agencies need to reflect that great diversity in the world. If we’re communicating to people from all over the world – and we are – then we have to have people on our teams inside of these agencies who are creating work that speaks to this beautiful global community. My role is to help these agencies get there.
Nurock: How do you go about doing that?
Smith: We have great programs at the One Club, where we find this talent and source it globally as we become a global organisation. We’re now smartly entering certain cities where we know the diversity is there and the creative diversity particularly exists. So we’ve expanded some of our programs. One program that I’m very proud of it is the creative boot camp, it’s a four-day workshop that introduces diverse creatives or those that are trying to enter our industry and may not know about it fully but have creative talent, and we seek those students out. We started out in New York and Atlanta and now we’re in about eight cities in the US, we’re in London, thankfully we’re also in Cape Town and now we’ll be in Johannesburg this summer. These students are sharp, they have great creative skills and are showing these agencies that this talent does exist. So we’ve been in the very fortunate position of working with just about everybody. The schools benefit, everybody wins when we do this kind of program. The students win, the clients win, and ultimately the agencies win.
Nurock: But it’s been proven so many times that any organisation that has diversity, and particularly those that have a board of directors that are diverse, are more successful than those that are not. So it’s kind of weird when you see organisations that don’t really buy into diversity, and that’s globally. Obviously for us in South Africa, diversity is a huge priority. So the fact that the One Club is doing these boot camps in South Africa is just fabulous for us. What success have you seen with the boot camps – with the students that attend and them getting jobs? What is the conversion?
Smith: Many of the students who attend the boot camps go on to enter the industry, and some of these students were not aware of advertising as a viable career option prior to this program. So the most rewarding thing that happens is that they discover themselves, they discover their creativity and that there’s another industry that’s open to hiring them, and they start to immediately hone these skills that I don’t think they were even aware they had. So it’s really great for us because we’re able to present these opportunities that these students would otherwise never get. The One Club works with the best creatives and the best agencies in the world to be able to provide this level of access. We open those doors and we make sure that these students have the ability to walk through them, meet them and get these jobs, and they do.
Nurock: Is the diversity at the boot camps more in terms of racial diversity or is it also related to gender?
Smith: It’s gender, it’s racial, it’s LGBT. We try to focus on providing opportunities for anyone who’s under-represented in our industry.
Nurock: What I love about this award show is that actually has a purpose that goes beyond just awards.
Smith: Yeah, we care about what we do and it shows. Throughout my career, coming to the One Club and being able to work with some of my colleagues on these programs, I can hands down tell you that they all care. That makes a huge difference when we approach the work that we’re doing every day – we’re not just coming to work, we’re trying to figure out how to make this better. With everyone having that mindset here, we’re a small team but it makes it very effortless and beneficial and rewarding at the same time.
Nurock: What do you think is the reason why only 3% of women globally are creative directors? Because if you get to account management or PR or media, women dominate. Why is it not so in the creative department?
Smith: I did diversity for one of the largest Swiss banks in the world and the issue remained the same. I think that there are subtle biases that exist within our industry, in most industries, and I think that those biases allow those currently at the helm – mostly white males – to hire people like themselves because they feel more comfortable interacting with them from a business perspective or even from a personal relationship. So it’s definitely not because there are no talented women, in fact quite the contrary. With the programs I’m doing, I’m seeing more and more young women trying to enter the creative side of advertising than ever before and there are a lot of women in the industry who would love to be in those positions. It would behove our clients to lean on some of the agencies a little bit more, to make sure that women are represented at the highest levels in advertising. I also think that as women, we have to knock down those barriers and be more forceful. I think that we’ve accepted the backseat in that we’re not demanding that we get a seat at the table, and when we do finally decide ‘enough of being behind the scenes’, we’ll see what we can accomplish.
Nurock: Thank you Traecy. Just continue doing this amazing work. The advertising industry and business needs more people like you. I think every organisation needs a director of diversity.
One Show Creative Week runs from 9 to 13 May 2016. Click through to our One Show awards special section and watch for live coverage of the One Show Creative Week from me, roving reporter, Ann Nurock.
