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See it, wanna be it
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KNOX BALBASTRO
adobo magazine | July - August 2016
G
IRL POWER as a battle
cry came to my attention
when I started singing
along with the Spice Girls.
It’s been somewhat abused lately,
invoked by female Nobel Peace Prize
awardees as well as young ladies
exposing their armpit hair. But the
nittygritty of female empowerment
can’t be neatly summed up in a
slogan. That is what I’ve learned
during my week in Cannes, as
part of the See It Be It Program.
The program, which selected
15 high p
otential creatives from a
pool of over 500 around the world,
is an initiative by Cannes Lions to
address the lack of female creative
leadership in advertising. Depending
on the source, top female creatives
comprise from 3% to 10% of the
total—an alarming percentage
when you think of whom ads are
made for. As a creative, we know
it’s the women who buy stuff. How
many times have you dreaded
seeing yet another brief for MOM?
But I digress. Back to GIRL
POWER! What does it really mean?
For Mel B, it’s about telling the
world what she wants, what she
really really wants. But for me, it is
about harnessing my talents and
reaching my maximum potential
despite some setbacks I face because
of my gender. These setback are