A well-known advertising executive and worldwide creative director at WPP Group resigned his position yesterday amid an uproar over remarks he made at an industry event about female creative executives. The comments, by Neil French, 61, drew attention to the absence of women at the highest levels of the creative side of the ad industry.Mr. French told an audience in Toronto on Oct. 6 that women "don't make it to the top because they don't deserve to," saying their roles as caregivers and childbearers prevented them from succeeding in top positions.
His comments infuriated some executives in the audience of more than 300 people, prompting one of them, Nancy Vonk, the co-chief creative officer of Ogilvy Toronto, a unit of WPP Group, to write a column for a Web site denouncing his comments.
Rightly so.
According Vonk, French said that women are “crap”:
"It felt like I got a shotgun blast in the face. I've had the experience of him being an excellent leader and very inspiring person. My head is still spinning because it was so outrageous. The upshot of what he said is that you give [women] a shot and they run off and have babies. It wasn't in good humor. It was extremely painful the way he spoke."
Not to judge a book but its cover (ok maybe a little), but take a look at this pic of French and tell me you're surprised.
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Good Lord. Sometimes, when I see people like this guy, or Ann Coulter or David Horowitz, I can't help but think they're liberal moles who are just pretending to hold these opinions to make the conservatives they align themselves with look crazy.
The other possibility is that they do hold these opinions, and they actually are crazy. I don't know which idea is more depressing.
I doubt his comment has anything to do with his politics.
most likely, he is just one of those poeple who enjoys being a blowhard and making outrageous comments.
yeah, i'm sure it was just some harmless fun. why'd these emotional hysterical women have to get their panties in a bunch over it?
jones, read the article... french himself said, "I wasn't joking, but I was saying it in a jokey way, in a situation that was supposed to be entertainment." he wasn't just trying to get a rise out of people... he truly believes that women should not be creative executives in ad agencies because they "don't deserve" to be.
and there you are thinking there's no boys' clubs left in the world. you're so fucking glib, it makes me sick... but i guess it's good, 'cos you remind me of some of the worst parts of myself - the whole white boy "everything's okay, don't make such a big deal about it" bullshit...
And so he lost his job.
Yeah!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/22/ncrap22.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/22/ixnewstop.html
Once again with easier linkage and more appropriate language.
This asshole lost his job over this.
The hue and cry was so loud he had to resign. Of course he says his comments were taken out of context. Right - when describing what he said most people forgot to mention the woman dressed like a French Maid who brought him a glass of water.
Buh bye!
Well, u see i think a part of his personality is relishing the role of the old school cigar chomping sexist pig. U know he has all kinds of delusions about himself, It sounds like the entire add world has/d been cowtowing to him for
decades. He made a living pushing buttons, and now it seems he lost his part time job over it.
I agree though that this behavior is not appropriate for an industry function or in the workplace, it is better suited to a private men's enviroment, u know the locker room bull session or whatever.
I dunno, Jessica. The guy's described as the Howard Stern of the ad world, and Vonk's group that hired him for the event was somehow surprised that he was suddenly controversial? Sounds like piss-poor event planning to me.
Jesus, Kowtow is not spelled with a C. It has nothing to do with bovines. It refers to the protocol for addressing Asian potentates.
jones,
do you really think it's appropriate in an exclusive men's environment? i was just at a party this weekend where a guy started going off on some chauvanist crap in the company of other men and i found it totally inappropriate... perhaps i was wrong to.