Cannes Lion, International Festival of Creativity has release its shortlist of 15 female creative experts chosen from different parts of the world to participant at this year’s ‘See It Be It’ category of the Cannes exclusive programme.
The seven-day festival plays host the largest gathering of worldwide advertising professionals, designers, digital innovators, PR experts and marketers from about 100 countries around the world.
The ‘See It Be It’ category was introduced in 2014 when Cannes organisers noticed the disparity in the attendance and participation of female middle and senior level creative’s managers at the festival. This could only mean that fewer women were involved in the creation process across creative agencies globally.
In a bid to increase the ratio of women leaders in creative departments in agencies worldwide, Cannes selects a group of 15 women every year to take part in series of main stage seminars, get involved in behind-the-scenes jury room access to learn what goes into stand-out campaigns and benefit from specially designed workshops with awarded senior creatives.
These ladies will also have one-to-one mentoring with a host of the most respected industry leaders and a range of networking opportunities.
Madonna Badger, the 2017 See It Be It Ambassador commented that “The talented and confident 15 women that were chosen for this year’s Cannes Lion See It Be It program represent various creative positions inside and out of agencies, large and small. They are also leaders who are actively effecting change in their communities. One of our goals this year will be to creatively strategize a format for past and present See It, Be It participants to become a trusted support system for creative women globally. I am so honored and excited to get to know all of these remarkable women.”
Below is a list of this year’s participants;
Adebola Adegbulugbe
Copy Group Head, Insight Publicis, Nigeria
Adebola is Copy Group Head at Insight Publicis, Nigeria's leading advertising agency. Where she has worked for over 9 years and is an expert in creating award winning campaigns for top clients such as Heineken, GSK, MTN and Tecno Mobile etc.
When she's not writing copy to help her clients get amazing marketing results, she loves volunteering as a mentor for teenage girls with her group Women Educating Girls, you can also find her interviewing unsung Nigerian heroines and writing inspirational articles for an online and offline magazine set to inspire, inform and empower Nigerian women to live a more purposeful life.
Adebola is the only African among this year’s participants.
Atiya Zaidi
Executive Creative Director North, Synergy Dentsu, Islamabad Atiya says a story saved her. She was at a cross roads in her life and was about to quit college, Chelsea college of Arts and Design, London; she remembered a story her mother told her as a child. On a perilous journey a magical voice tells the travellers, “Don’t turn back or you will turn into stone, don’t turn back!” If she had turned back and chosen a life of comfort back home rather than being a single parent to a 10-month-old baby and a full time student, I would have turned into stone - not pushing myself. This is the power of an impactful story, and that’s what I want to master. With so many doubts lulling one to sleep at night, I dragged myself to a graduation and lived to tell the tale. My fears made me fearless and that’s what I applied in my career. Advertising is what I know yet I know nothing and that’s the most exciting thing about life. There is so much more to learn, to explore and to be amazed with. As a mother of two kids, I made it this far, but I am not there yet.
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