MOST WOMEN DIRECTORS DON'T STAND A CHANCE. ALMA HAR'EL IS CHANGING THAT.

The number of women directing commercial campaigns for brands is abysmal. How come? Let's start with the fact that, most often, women and directors of color don't even get invited to the bid. Director Alma Har'el set out to change that when she launched FREE THE BID. Three years later, it's freaking working. This year she doubled down at Cannes Lions, partnering with major brands like AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Amazon and more to launch FREE THE WORK, a curated talent discovery service of women and underrepresented creators. Oh, and her debut feature film, Honey Boy, written by and starring Shia LaBeouf, premieres in a few months, too. Here's how she's changing the entire game...

RM: You launched Free The Bid in 2016, right. What were you aiming for?

ALMA: In 2016, I was an independent filmmaker doing music videos. I had a hard time making a living, but I directed a documentary that went on to win the Tribeca Film Festival. I started to get commercial work and made AirBnB’s first Global campaign as well as a campaign for Facebook. I was making a living from commercials and working with people I love. It helped me sustain myself as a documentary filmmaker. I slowly started to see that behind the scenes, the triple bidding system was always putting me in front of two (white) men. Women were not even invited to bid. 

RM: You did a spot for Stella Artois.

ALMA: I had the honor of being the first woman director to ever direct a campaign for them. It’s a brand that, growing up as somebody that wanted to make films, I always looked up to because they focused on the art of filmmaking. Directors like Jonathan Glazer and Wim Wenders did some of their campaigns. It was quite shocking to hear I was the first woman. 

RM: Not many women were directing commercial campaigns for brands, at the time.

ALMA: It was and still is a cycle of brands and agencies saying women directors’ reels are not strong enough, but of course they weren’t strong – they never even get the chance to get in the room. 

RM: Free The Bid was born to change that.

ALMA: Yes. I did an interview about the situation and the brilliant PJ Pereira of Pereira O'Dell invited me to talk. His agency was the one I did my AirBnb campaign with. He discussed the bidding system with me and how we can disrupt it. I launched “Free The Bid” literally out of my kitchen. I built it on my laptop together with a programmer. At first, it was just a database which at the time had 75 female filmmakers, and the idea was to get brands and ad agencies to take a pledge that on every commercial, they would allow one woman to bid.

RM: It’s working.

ALMA: Within three years, we're already working with 160 ad agencies, 122 brands including P&G, Visa, HP and Diageo. When we started working with HP, Antonio Lucio, who was their CMO at the time, was shocked to find out that they had zero women directors working on all their campaigns. After coming on board to work with us and supporting us with all their agencies, they went from zero women directors to 59%... in 18 months. 

RM: You just doubled down at Cannes, this summer.

ALMA: Yes we launched FREE THE WORK at Cannes this year. This is a curated talent discovery service powered by machine learning. Think Spotify meets iMDB with social network and mentoring capabilities. We’re now in 20 countries, worldwide. We're also launching into TV and film – it's a big expansion. We're also adding people of color and creators who identify as trans-women, trans-masculine and non-binary. For lack of a better word, we call it “Underrepresented creators” which we hope to change! 

RM: One of the things that I've noticed is there are a lot of agencies and brands, but there don't seem to be any media companies that have signed on.

ALMA: We actually have Amazon joining us now as a founding partner, as well as AT&T. Any brand or company that isn't doing something is basically killing itself, so they should look at it like that. We know that 85% of purchasing decisions are being made by women and that there is creative stagnation and lack of brand relevance in companies that keep women and POC out of their creative process. 

RM: Let me ask you, have there been examples of companies or business leaders, who for some reason had the opportunity to jump in with Free The Bid, but didn't? That you thought, "How can you not?"

ALMA: I mean, 100%. I don't want to shame anybody, but there are so many excuses and stories we tell ourselves about why we can't bring change, and why we can't do work that we believe in. There are giant brands out there that still don't even understand the concept of equality and the way it affects their relevance. They will be forced to learn with time because Generation Z has even less patience for this archaic thinking. 

RM: It’s hard to find a brand that doesn’t at least pretend to care.

ALMA: I think that it’s pretty depressing to admit that the level of virtue signaling is through the roof. We see companies, corporations, brands that want to bring change. They have committees to bring change, efforts of all sorts, and they are completely clueless about how to bring change to their organizations. They only signal that they have new values, but they're not taking any action that would make their consumers or people who work with them believe what they're saying. This is why Free The Work built a tracking tool for diversity efforts that will centralize the results in one place. Companies will be able to see in real time if their agencies and creative partners are hiring diverse creatives or just talking about it in corporate events. 

WHAT'S NEXT FOR FREE THE BID?

RM: Why have you chosen to take on these issues yourself?

ALMA: I mean, because I was in a position to do so, in a moment where I saw the solution. I saw how to do it and what was missing. I remember being awake for 72 hours before we launched it, in my kitchen, walking back and forth. People around me at the time were saying, "You shouldn't do this. You're not going to work after you do this. You're one of the only women that get to do commercials, and you think that things are going to change? Nothing's going to change. You're just going to get less work because you're putting more women through the gates, but there's no way that the numbers are going to rise." The fear that was expressed just made it very clear to me that I had to do it. If you’re in a privileged position you have to find a way to spend that privilege like it was stolen dollars.

RM: How have Free The Bid and Free The Work changed you?

ALMA: It changed me in the way it changes anybody who starts to dedicate a big part of their lives to working for something that isn't only self-serving to them, by connecting through it to a bigger community. To a bigger perspective and point of view of the world, the business, the power of the structures in place. It opened me up. I’m more tired and happier than ever. 

RM: You’ve cultivated a network of creative leaders who business leaders can’t ignore.

ALMA: I've learned so much, and I've discovered so many incredibly brave people that are doing similar work and connected to them. Not just for women, but in general. It really has been taking me out of feeling hopeless. When you wake up every day and you know that there's a reason for doing what you do and it's bringing change to people, it makes you feel so much better about everything in your life. I get to ask every day what's stopping us from doing better work? What's stopping us from being more creative, more free, more inclusive, more diverse? 

WORKING WITH P&G TO TELL THE STORY OF OLYMPIC MOMS

RM: Your campaign for P&G still stands as one of the most powerful and provocative I think they've ever done. You approached storytelling from a mom's perspective, and it's almost as if you were projecting a world in which we could see people the way their mom sees them. Especially kids who are the victims of bullying and bias. 

ALMA: That campaign is an amazing example of what's happening in marketing. It's a campaign that was running for five years. It was about mothers, and it was never directed by a woman. When Wieden+Kennedy worked on it, I got to bid against two other men, and I won. I wanted to bring to it something that would transcend the perspective of a mother. In a way that didn’t just speak to the effort that is being put towards raising talented Olympians, but also to the fight that we have to fight – all of us. People from all walks of life that suffer from the lack of understanding that our society has towards somebody that's different than them. “The life of the other.”

RM: You and I recently spent a day with Marc Pritchard and his team, and I was really inspired by the way they’re challenging themselves as brand leaders.

ALMA: I think that P&G is doing some of the biggest soul searching right now as a leading brand in general. You can see that with Gillette and other brands are really trying to do work that stands for something and that is not neutral and really taking risks in saying something that is meaningful, beyond “buy this” and “buy that.”

"WE LIVE IN URGENT TIMES"

RM: The hashtag “No Neutral” came from a conversation with one of our clients, an architecture firm. We were talking carbon neutral, and LEED certified, and all the things that you're supposed to do if you're going to say you're green. What they said to me was, "Ross, listen, there's no such thing as carbon neutral. Buildings either add something positive to the environment, or taking something away, and there's nothing in the middle." And I was like oh shit, that's true for buildings and for homes. Then we started to apply that to brands and businesses, and now human beings. 

ALMA: We live in such urgent times. The world has been failed by a lot of governments, by democracy. The only people who are going to bring change now are the people that are going to lead. It's the same for brands – they have to be leaders.

RM: Wouldn't it be incredible if Victoria's Secret gave you control of their creative?

ALMA: Not if they continue to only serve a very typical form of the woman's body. I'm not interested in it, to be honest.

RM: That's why they need you, Alma.

ALMA: They need a lot of women. 

TEAMING UP WITH SHIA LEBOUF

RM: Your debut feature film, Honey Boy, written by and starring Shia LaBeouf, comes out later this year. It seems like a big shift for you, because you're now exploring male relationships, masculinity, as a woman.

ALMA: A lot of people – and this is another thing that women come across – expected me to make a film about women. It's so troubling that we put women in creative boxes. I keep getting so many emails from women that are so frustrated that they are only being offered projects for female hygiene, and stories about empowering women. One of the biggest reasons why our society looks the way it looks...is that men and boys only see themselves through other men's eyes. All these old definitions of masculinity, I mean, where does that come from? If men weren't only being brought up and raised through these images that build those expectations in them, to be a certain way. I think that would shift too. 

RM: It’s a great point.

ALMA: I was really interested in actually doing something about that, and the film deals with a relationship between a father and son, how it shapes this kid. I can't wait to share it with people.

RM: We can’t wait to see it, Alma. Thank you.

This LinkedIn series, #NoNeutral, tells the real stories of business leaders who are bravely taking brand positions that aren’t exactly safe. Ross Martin, CEO of Brand Strategy & Business Innovation firm Blackbird, talks directly to the executives who make it happen. No bullshit, no puffery, just reality. The stories of what actually happened behind the scenes…and how. For more, email [email protected].