Tara Ford on CCO Diversity: “If People Aren't Onto It, They're Missing Out”

Tara Ford is confident future creative departments will be more diverse because “the next generation is very much more female”.

Accenture Song’s APAC chief creative officer said diversity is “good for everybody” at SXSW Sydney, in response to a question from LBB. A conversation about a lack of gender diversity in AUNZ creative leadership is currently ripping around the industry.

“It's good for men in the business, it's good for the creative work. It's good for clients ... if people aren't onto it by now, then they're missing out. Having diverse departments, it's a superpower.”

Tara noted that “diversity is one thing and inclusion is another” and believes “creative departments are now becoming a lot more inclusive.” She said The Monkeys’ creative department is comprised of majority female leadership, including ECD Barbara Humphries.

“All I would say is, it's going to be better, because I can see the next generation is very much more female,” she said.

The creative leader was speaking on an Accenture panel about AI alongside newly-minted Accenture Song AUNZ lead Bronwyn van der Merwe, who moderated the discussion on her first day in the new job, and global CCO Neil Heymann.

As AI promises creative efficiency, one audience member noted the industry’s contraction as a result - widespread redundancies, including across creative departments. 

Bronwyn was optimistic the industry will “rebuild” in the same way it did when the dot-com bubble burst. They were her first public comments since she was named as Mark Green’s replacement to lead Accenture Song across the region alongside Matt Michael, who will become CEO of Droga5.

“I remember with the first wave of digital, there was a lot of jobs,” Bronwyn recalled. 

“And then we had the boom, and then the bust, and everybody lost their jobs, and the whole bottom of the market fell out. And it was pretty scary and devastating. I was in London at the time. 

“Then we had to rebuild. We had to rebuild with things like human-centred design ... I think we probably will have to go through a similar thing in our industry, which is to reset a little as we think about the new roles we need, how we use this technology, how we reshape our organisations.”

Neil acknowledged “there's a huge amount of anxiety connected to this” widespread downsizing.

“The shape of what world class creative work is has been reforming, and it feels like we're in a period of almost bridging two eras in a way,” he explained.

“There will be a swing back to what makes content unique, what actually has the best chance of breaking through and connecting with people. But in the meantime, it's kind of on the people running these organisations to continue to encourage their creatives to evolve and to embrace the technology and become whatever the future creative looks like.”

Tara said every piece of work The Monkeys - which will rebadge to Droga5 in December - has launched over the past year used AI in some way, but not in production. Generative AI was used to sell in the idea that would ultimately become the Grand Prix-winning ‘Play it Safe’ film fronted by Tim Minchin, for example.

“You bring intuition, and you also bring your taste. Those things are inherently human,” Tara added. 

“A lot of what is beautifully crafted is an accident sometimes, but then it's moulded into what it needs to be. AI can be a partner in that. But it does rely on someone to come and prove what they feel is right ... it will come down to the taste, the eye, the feel, those human elements.” Neil admitted he’s concerned around tech shortcuts being detected in the work.

“We've all seen ads that were clearly created in a different market, have been overdubbed, and, for efficiency's sake, have been localised,” he said. 

“That's what worries me a little bit around some of the efficiencies. As humans, we instinctively know when something's not right. The person in the image has too many or too few fingers, and things like that. The more that we can make sure that these things are coming from a real place of insight, and the more specific we can get about those insights, the better.”

Neil said the dream is to have one team capable of specialising in both human craft and emotion, plus tech and scalability.  

“You have a team maybe more similar to a traditional marketing team that are developing the empathy, the insights, the kind of human thought and emotion behind the idea. But they're working hand in glove with a team that can scale it and retain the fidelity of that idea across all these different touch points.

“There is a lot of room between a brand spot and hitting a button to fill out a form to have something delivered. And that space of understanding the brand is still a huge, untapped space.”