The Women Powering Progress in Advertising

Susan Horsburgh

With courage and conviction, trailblazers like Jacquie Alley and Jasmin Bedir are pushing boundaries, advocating for the under-represented, and reshaping the advertising industry.

When Jasmin Bedir arrived in Australia two decades ago, she entered an advertising world almost solely populated by privileged, private-school educated white people. Ad men did deals on the golf course, nepotism was standard, and the gender inequality outrageous. The industry was run by “total cowboys”.

According to Jasmin, not much has changed. As the daughter of a Turkish electrician and German cleaner traumatised by World War II, Jasmin grew up in a migrant community in northern Germany, where advertising was taught as a trade and those who did it came from a diverse cross-section of society.

Jasmin Bedir

“I found it jarring for quite some time,” says the CEO of Innocean Australia, recalling her move here and the privilege she encountered. “I had a huge feeling of inadequacy. I walked into agencies and thought, how do the women have these handbags and go for nice dinners on their salaries?”

With her curiosity and talent for problem-solving, Jasmin had risen up the ranks in her home country, only to find the doors closed to her in Australia because she didn’t have connections. The jobs she wanted all seemed to go to “some average dude” – until a German executive offered her a managing director role building Spark44, a client-agency joint venture, across Asia Pacific.

Jasmin’s professional ascent has been hard and lonely at times but now, at the helm of Innocean, she has the seniority to publicly question the homogeneity of the sector, embrace minorities and agitate for change. “I just can’t help myself,” says Jasmin, a regular keynote speaker and columnist. “When you come from nothing, you have very little to lose.

“I’m a really weird fit for a super-high capitalist industry like advertising because I’ve got strong morals and values … There’s nothing wrong with profit, but I’ve always been outspoken about our responsibility to do better, to give back.”

Jasmin’s secret weapon is her network of like-minded women who’ve “found each other” through shared experiences, such as sitting in creative departments waiting in vain for promotion. Like a growing number of change-makers, Jasmin has become a role model for rebellion. In 2021, she created Fck the Cupcakes in response to the rage women felt towards International Women’s Day and its “performative theatrics”.

The social enterprise started with campaigns against misogyny and has pivoted towards research into the media’s impact on masculinity. Talking on the topic has made her a troll magnet, and engaging men is a struggle – “If they speak up, what will their mates say?” – but Jasmin is undeterred. “I’ve got a huge amount of resilience,” she says. “I believe we can do good.”

Jacquie Alley has a similar compulsion to tackle social injustice, motivated by her Christian faith – and possibly perimenopause. “I just have less of a care factor about the repercussions,” she jokes. “It’s also the power of owning your own business [with partner Stephen Leeds]. I don’t need to play any politics in the industry. I have a unique opportunity to speak up about things that I believe matter.”

Jacquie Alley

After growing up in her father’s agency, Jacquie followed her curiosity rather than any master plan. She studied HR and counselling, and worked with family violence survivors for 10 years, before returning to the business. Now the COO of The Media Store and first female chair of the Independent Media Agencies of Australia (IMAA), she is one of the industry’s most fearless voices – on ageism, working parent support, women’s leadership and reconciliation. Her agency boasts a pay gap favouring women, with a 60 percent-female team and equal-gendered senior leadership.

“Sometimes it’s not about finding that thing you're passionate about,” she tells her four sons, one of whom is named Micah, after the Old Testament prophet who championed justice. “It’s the thing that keeps you up at night and pisses you off – that’s what you should speak about.”

A turning point came for Jacquie when legendary industry figure Greg “Sparrow” Graham told her he couldn’t find work because he was deemed too old and expensive. She thought of her father’s generation, pushed out during the digital revolution, taking decades of intellectual property with them.

Jacquie points out that globally only 5 percent of agency workforces are over 50 – “and 40-year-olds are planning their next career move”. Innovation is too often synonymous with youth: “And I just fundamentally don’t agree. There can be really wise young people, just as there can be great innovators who are older.”

Jacquie is an inaugural member of the Experience Advocacy Taskforce combating ageism, an advisor to The Village (an initiative supporting working parents in advertising), and was the founding chair of the IMAA’s Diversity Council. In 2022, she won the B&T Women in Media Social Change Maker Award, as well as the Executive Leader Award in 2023 and 2024.

Despite the accolades, Jacquie says she took years to find her own style of assertiveness: “I don’t want to be aggressive and I don’t want to be intimidated, so how do I find that middle ground?” The answer was practice. To those reluctant to speak up, Jacquie suggests:

“Say yes to things you have no idea how to do — then when you’ve done it, you think, ‘That wasn’t so bad.’ The confidence just builds.”

In the fight for gender equality in the media, Jacquie argues the missing piece is male allyship. “We need those allied males on the journey,” she says. “Some are too scared to enter the conversation for fear of making a mistake or aren’t convinced of the value we can bring. Some are still really comfortable in the boys’ club.”

Jacquie’s advice to emerging leaders? Trust that cranky feeling – and harness it. Because sometimes the troublemakers are exactly what the industry needs.