Free The Bid – One Year On

It’s been just over a year since filmmaker Alma Har’el launched Free The Bid and, in that time, we’ve seen it develop from a right-minded pledge to a worldwide movement. A non-profit initiative advocating on behalf of women directors for equal opportunities, the initial request was clear - agencies were asked to include a woman director on every triple-bid project, production companies were asked to sign more woman directors and marketers asked to seek one woman’s bid on each of their commercial productions.

The initial response was hugely positive, with early adopters like HP, Visa and eBay soon joined by major brands including Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Twitter, Levi’s and LinkedIn. Aiding the brand uptake, more than 40 agencies quickly signed up to support the initiative, including BBDO Global, FCB Global, J. Walter Thompson Global, Y&R Global, McCann Global, Pereira & O’Dell, Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Campbell Ewald and DDB.

As an example of how the movement has been effective, since making the pledge to Free The Bid last September, the number of women directors invited by BBDO to participate in their bidding process has increased 400%, and the actual number of women directors hired has doubled.

We’ve been firm supporters of Free The Bid from the get-go, so took the year anniversary as an excuse to sit down with Alma and chat about the achievements so far and what’s to come!

Congratulations on an amazing first year of ‘Free The Bid’. Did you have any expectation that the movement would take off as well as it has when you first launched?

I started Free The Bid in a matter of a few weeks. I gave an interview about the state of women directors in advertising, PJ Pereira read it and contacted me about something he was going to test at his own agency and I decided to run with it and take it to all the other agencies and to the brands themselves.

It was an impulse to act because I realized that for the first time in my life I was in a position to do something that can bring true change to women directors. I believed that if women’s work were to be seen and if they were celebrated and featured in a way that’s similar to the treatment men get, the results would follow. Saying all that, I had no idea how it would unfold, if people would agree to do it, how long it would take and if there would be a way to keep it going more than the initial push. I don't think anyone thought that the results would be so astounding and contrary to the slow progress in Hollywood.

Thanks to early supporters like Susan Credle, Cindy Gallop, Kat Gordon, Spike Jonze and of course the financial and vocal support from brands like HP and Visa it became possible to realize our vision for change. While we’ve made great strides in our first year and received incredible support from both agencies and brands, there’s still a long way to go. We need all the help we can get to sustain ourselves and to keep the momentum we’re gaining locally and globally.

Could you talk us though what happened in that initial discussion with PJ Pereira and the steps you took afterwards?

The initial spark came from my interview with Mashable by Valentina Valentini about the plight of women directors in advertising. It dawned on me to speak out about my experience after realizing that I was consistently the first woman director hired by brands I was directing commercials for. I knew how many talented women were being left out of the conversation because I was always bidding against two men. PJ Pereira and his agency hired me on the first International Campaign for Airbnb, (who took the pledge to Free The Bid in June), and we remained in touch.

He read the article and asked me to meet for dinner and discuss some thoughts he had about the process - he pointed out the importance of breaking into the triple bid system and how cyclical the inequality becomes when women are left out of it. His idea was to test it at his own agency for a while and see if it brings results. At first, he was considering a 4th bid by a woman on every job but after a few conversations we both felt that to make it a reality and not an experiment it should be one of the 3 bids. I went home after that dinner and started to deconstruct all the ways in which this can get stuck. I felt that the only way it will happen is if brands, ad agencies and production companies came together. I also knew we need a database of all the women directors working in advertising because everyone I was talking to thought there are only 5 of them.

PJ’s help in getting Free The Bid started can’t be overstated, and we're incredibly grateful for his spark.

We actually just followed up with PJ and eBay who work with Pereira & O'Dell to see how their pledge played over the year, and it turned out they worked with several women directors. In the video case study they sent us, Suzy Deering, PJ Pereira, and directors Natalie Rae and Crystal Moselle discussed how when brand and agency pledges to Free The Bid together it open doors to new exciting work from women directors.

The initiative addresses brands, agencies and production companies in different ways, whether it be the number of women put forward for jobs or balancing the ratio on rosters. Were there any sectors that took more convincing?

Every sector has its champions, its visionaries, its forward thinkers, its fearless leaders who fight for change and see diversity as a matter of survival. And every sector has its traditionalists, those who are afraid of change or scared of equality or are too busy to pay attention to the world around them.

Every day on Free The Bid starts with the same mission: to be inclusive to all of the above and find ways to show how easy it is to make a commitment when the reward is more creativity, more work that communicates with half of the population and more fairness in a world that favors men. It’s a case by case basis in every sector. As we continue expanding globally as well, we rely on ambassadors both official and unofficial to chip away at such a momentous task. The work will be ongoing until including women becomes the industry standard, worldwide. 

It’s wonderful to see so many brands and agencies take on the initiative and work towards achieving it. Without naming names (unless you want to), what have been the arguments against jumping in and pledging support?

There are a few main arguments (aside from outright misogyny), and I would love nothing more than for people to look at the numbers of the agencies that have taken the pledge. It’s the best answer for all arguments. But let me go over a few of the main issues that we encounter:

 - There is a misconception that there aren't enough women directors to keep the pledge. In reality, women directors have directed some of the most successful campaigns of the past year. One of the main problems that we encounter is that everyone in the industry is time-poor. Although they can easily recall the names of male directors, they don’t have the same mental list of women directors as readily available. In answer to this, we make every effort to make people aware of our easily-filtered, constantly updated website that has over 400 reels of women directors, so that anyone with an immediate need of hiring a director can use it to find talented women for jobs big and small. 
 - Some women will be asked to bid as token women, and that will burden the production companies and the women themselves. I like to think this is a marathon and not a sprint, so we all carry some of the burden of igniting change. The numbers are proving that some agencies have gone up 400% in the hiring of women directors so the work is not in vain.
 - Agencies don't like to impose rules on their creatives and their producers. The answer to that is that Free The Bid is not a rule. It is a principle, a suggestion, a pledge to develop a good habit of expanding your creative horizons into the untapped pool of many brilliant new voices who can make your campaigns shine in ways you can’t imagine.
 - Agencies that worry about their clients opposing the idea of not getting the richest reels who usually belong to men. The answer to that is they are only bringing ONE WOMAN into the triple bid and that most brands we speak to are excited to have a woman's perspective on their campaign. Women are often portrayed in ways that distance them from a brand. There is also no way to make women’s reels richer other than hiring them.

The movement has some amazing ambassadors all around the globe, including Kim Gehrig and Cindy Gallop. How did those discussions come about and what do you look for in fellow FTB-ers?

Cindy Gallop is one of our celebrated day-one supporters. I was introduced to her through Kat Gordon who made a huge change in the industry and in the numbers of women creative directors with her 3% conference. We have a few Guardians who help us make the right decisions at every junction. 

Another important initial supporter has been Antonio Lucio at HP, who's been celebrated by Forbes magazine as the number two most infuential CMO in the world for 2017. Antonio was the first CMO to see what we do and offer his financial backing. It was crucial to our successful first year and thanks to that we hired our Executive Director Emma Reeves and our Communications and Content Manager, Chloe Coover. We’re excited that HP has renewed their financial commitment to our cause for another year, and it feels encouraging to be supported by someone like Antonio, who has integrated a vision of diversity across the board at HP.

As far as Kim Gehrig, with our international expansion we like to appoint a stand out woman director in each territory who can act as an advocate for Free The Bid, women who are respected in the industry and have a few big campaigns under their belt. Kim is one of the best women directors working today and we’re thrilled to have her on board.

We’re also looking to have a diverse team of ambassadors and our main focus this year will be to increase the numbers of women of color both on our database and on our team.

Are there any areas within the market that it’s proved difficult to implement Free The Bid? Genre / products that are traditionally more ‘male’ led? What’s the best way to address this?

Of course, one of Free The Bid’s missions is to break stereotypical conventions of only hiring women directors for products like personal hygiene and laundry detergents. We want women to be hired for all kinds of jobs. When I gave my interview to Mashable which led to PJ contacting me it was right after I directed a commercial for Stella Artois. They are known for their cinematic campaigns and their work with filmmakers like Wim Wenders, Jonathan Glazer and some of the leading directors of each generation. I was astonished to find out I was the first woman to direct a campaign for them. Products like beers or cars are usually going to men.

Since 85% consumer decisions across all categories are made by women, it’s fundamentally important to have marketing that speaks to women and represents us as we see ourselves.

We work with agencies who handle jobs for traditionally male-centric industries, so we’re excited that their pledges will lead to women being included in the bidding processes for those jobs. We look to our agencies to implement the Free The Bid pledge on brands that wouldn’t traditionally include women on certain jobs, challenging them to stretch their imaginations. These efforts on our part mirror a push for intersectionality within the working culture of the agencies, helping to meet the need for more diverse storytelling and marketing.

We love finding brilliant unsigned female talent for our Scout and Presents shows and make a concerted effort to root out as many as we can. However, we do tend to see more male names than female crop up. Is one of the long-term goals of Free The Bid to make female directors more visible to the next generation of filmmakers? Do you have any plans to work with emerging talent?

If you take a look at our site, you’ll see we constantly create content for our main page that’s meant to celebrate women directors and help people discover new directors. We also have categories for both “unsigned” and “new” directors in our database. New directors are just starting out, while directors listed as unsigned have more experience under their belts.  We make an effort to not only add their profiles, but interview them and further highlight their work on our various social media platforms. We love to shine a spotlight on directors at all levels of experience, hopefully leading to more balanced ratios of women in upcoming generations of successful directors.

What’s been the most gratifying moment of the movement so far for you?

I think the most gratifying moment is to just have women directors come up to me or send me an email to tell me that they have been working a lot and that Free The Bid has changed the game. My friend Crystal Moselle, who supported us from the start, shot me a text a week or two after we launched it and said “It’s working!”

I just read an article the other day with an interview of Lisa Gunning, an editor and director I highly regard. She said she believes that Free The Bid has revolutionized the advertising world in one short year and helped hundreds of female directors become creative leaders in the ad industry. She specifically mentioned that on her last four jobs she’s been pitching against big male directors and been chosen. That’s it. That’s what I do it for. I was at the Women's March and saw women in their 60s and 70s protesting for the same rights they did 40 years ago. That’s the reason I’m very practical about this. I want change and I want to see numbers.

What can we expect from Free The Bid’s second year? What can we do to help?!

This year we are going to focus on bringing up our numbers of women of color, women from different socio-economic backgrounds, and trans women; as well as focusing on getting people who had refused to join us so far to take a look at our numbers. There’s a lot of work to be done and we’re only in the beginning. We want brands and agencies to understand how much they benefit from discovering women directors.

We’re also going to keep our global expansion. We have launched Free The Bid Brazil, Mexico, UK and Australia and we’re currently working with new locations to launch.

We’re organizing events that are meant to help grow our community and take the mystery out of getting into a directing career.

To help us you can visit to freethebid.com, as often as possible. Use the database to search for women directors. Bid them. Hire them. Check the site every week - there will be more news, interviews and directors featured each time. Help us celebrate women’s work and spread the word about them so their names become as known as their male counterparts. 

Photo credit: Portrait of Alma by Mary Rozzi