Heads of the week: Proud women

 
Daniela Jakab and Claudia Zechner founded Proud Mary, the first Swiss communications agency to focus on a female target group. 
There are 2,921 advertising agencies in Switzerland. And only one for women. That's the introduction on proudmary.ch, before a handbag pops into view on the website. Typical woman. And as women's handbags go, this one contains not only all kinds of interesting things, but also some surprising ones.
"Today, 80 percent of all purchasing decisions are made or influenced by women," one can read, for example. In the USA, a study shows that 75 percent of women living in a partnership already manage their joint assets. And Crédit Suisse knows that three out of ten Swiss women own more than 750,000 Swiss francs.
"We are facing a new social epoch: the century of women," says Creative Director Daniela Jakab. Women are becoming more independent, self-confident and educated, even in value-conservative Switzerland. "The labor force participation rate of women is continuously increasing. So is their importance for consumption," reckons Account Executive Claudia Zechner.
Billions are spent on cosmetics, detergents and fashion. Wellness, health or even lifestyle are part of the current consumer trend. "All these areas are particularly close to women's hearts," Daniela and Claudia know. And they can also prove it with studies and trend reports: The target group of women offers an enormous growth market.
Proud Mary wants to take these economic and scientific aspects into account with new communication requirements and is oriented towards gender marketing.
As Switzerland's first communications agency, it is focusing entirely on advertising for women. "90 percent of 2,000 top female decision-makers already wished for a different image of women in advertising in a survey in 2005," prove the proud Marys, looking forward to their professional future with serenity.
Did Claudia Zechner and Daniela Jakab already feel this need in their work as advertisers or more as consumers?
The ball was set rolling by the view of female consumers, they say. After countless discussions, the concrete reason was an ad for an oven, a testimonial ad in a women's magazine. "We both found it pretty awful. The wrong type of woman and a statement that a woman would never make." So this ad became the impetus to "work this very corner in the future."
Their self-born tool is called "fnoc" or, more fully developed, "female needs and opinion circle. Behind this youngest child of Swiss advertising is a growing card index of already over a hundred women. In the future, their needs and opinions will provide Proud Mary with the strategic basis for its female intuitions in advertising.
Both in this new form of market research and subsequently in the communicative implementation, Proud Mary is to be understood not only as a good-sounding name, but also "as an attitude". "Proud Mary is synonymous with the self-confident consumer of today. She is proud of her achievements and proud to be a woman. And that's how we approach women. Both in our advertising and in our surveys," explain the representatives of the new creative generation. The fact that this attitude should not simply be confused with feminism is an aspect to which the two attach great importance. Rather, they say, it's about strong economic arguments.
Proud Mary is also open to clients who are not just about the female market. After initial agency presentations, such a pitch for an overall account is already tempting. "We certainly won't block that right away." And there are also "of course men" in the multi-layered network.
Daniela Jakab and Claudia Zechner can draw on a combined 24 years of experience in advertising. During this time - mainly at Lang Gysi Knoll/NeueLGK - they have already won a Cannes Lion with their teams in addition to various awards from ADC to Eurobest.
Claudia Zechner, who works as an account executive at Proud Mary, entered the industry in 1992 via the media side after finishing business school. She learned media planning at Publisuisse in Bern. "An important step" was then the move to the advertiser mecca of Zurich. She did the marketing planner with a federal diploma and worked at IP Multimedia for the marketing of the advertising window of Pro Sieben/ Sat.1. "But I realized that advertising with the classic communicative part is my lifeblood," Claudia explains why she then moved back to Bern to Lang Gysi Knoll. Here she made the classic climb from assistant to senior consultant. Her last job was the image campaign for Swiss Post. Here, together with Jakab, she was also able to realize her long-standing dream of a commercial with dogs that are currently waiting for their letter carrier on TV.
Daniela Jakab, Creative Director at Proud Mary, came to advertising with a "classic career change. She first studied medicine until, before her second propaedeutic course, she had a crisis of purpose: "Do I want this for life?" As an alternative, she discovered a portrait of various advertising professions in a magazine, and finally an ad for a "CD Text" in Werbewoche. Although the abbreviation CD was unfamiliar to her, she nevertheless picked up the phone. Of course, they laughed at first. But still made an offer as a junior copywriter, because she already had journalistic freelance work to show. Even more tempting than the JWT opportunity in Zurich was the chance to try out Lang Gysi Knoll in Bern. This has turned into ten years and still a CD today. Jakab was promoted to team leadership at about the same time, when she turned down an offer from Jung von Matt in Hamburg after four years at LGK. Later, Jakab took over as overall creative director at LGK and, in parallel, completed a two-year postgraduate management training course at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences IAP. Her professional highlights include various jury assignments from the Golden Ear to Clio Awards Miami to Cannes, where two years ago she was allowed to judge the then new category of radio spots, "incidentally as the only woman among 16 men".
In their private lives, the new Zurich advertising women live in Bern. There they not only find a relaxing balance "to the pulsating and inspiring life" in the communications capital, but also enjoy their long-standing circle of friends, "consisting of women and men," the proud Marys smile.
Andreas Panzeri