J. Walter Thompson Sri Lanka launched 2018 with a preview of the book ‘Female Tribes, A conversation on Motherhood’ which is due to be released in full this May.
“We’ve spent the last year in conversation with 100 people about the idea and realities of motherhood,” said CEO of J. Walter Thompson Sri Lanka, Alyna Haji Omar.
“First time mums, young girls talking about their mums. Young women evaluating the choices before them, single mum’s, single dads playing double roles, Full-time dads reinventing the rules, LGBT mums, not-mums, celebrity mums…. We’ve spoken to so many wonderful people and retold these conversation through design, the first preview was launched in January and we’re thrilled with the reactions to it across the market.
“A large proportion of the brands we work with are mainly targeted at women but the masculinity of marketing remains a real barrier in reaching out to women in a meaningful way.”
Commenting on her journey as the CEO of JWT since June 2015 Haji Omar said, “In just over two years we have completely transformed the Sri Lanka operation making us a more vibrant, digitally led, strategically rooted creative powerhouse that is in every way ahead of the curve within the local industry.
“We set out to recalibrate our legacy, we restructured and established new KPIs and drove an entirely different, more aggressive and certainly more progressive agenda, building core competencies around Female Capital was and continues to be a central focus – looking back on the past two years we’ve hired 80% women, our teams are equally represented, my leadership team is equally represented, my junior leadership team in dominated by women, two of three core departments are led by women, our last winner of the global high potentials program… a woman – the ROI is powerful, over 400% growth in just over two years,” she said.
CEO of J. Walter Thompson South Asia, Tarun Rai said, “Our Sri Lanka operations have been on a roll ever since Haji Omar took over as CEO. And I am not all surprised at their amazing success.
Director of Client Services, Michelle Georgesz said, “I find that being a women- led agency infuses the team with a powerful blend of empathy and courage that has played no small part in building enduring relationships, not only with our clients but with our partners and colleagues as well.
“We believe it is important to break barriers and stereotypes and through our ongoing research, we believe we have found genuine insights and not just pre-conceived assumptions into female behaviour,” she said.
Head of Creative at J. Walter Thompson Sri Lanka, Asela de Silva said, “Being a creative in the industry for quite awhile, I have found that when the team is diverse, there is definitely an edge when tapping into insights and the ideas that come out of it, and subsequently the campaigns are more authentic, powerful and resonates with people better.”