Cindy Gallop: The Michael Bay of Business
Founder of If We Ran The World and Make Love Not Porn
http://cindygallop.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cindygallop
Twitter: @cindygallop
Bio:
Cindy moved to New York from London in 1998 to start up the US office of ad agency, and Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year. She is the founder & CEO of www.ifwerantheworld.com, a radically simple web-meets-world platform designed to turn good intentions into action, one micro action at a time – currently 9 months old in beta. She is also the founder of www.makelovenotporn.com which launched at TED 2009. She consults for brands and clients who want to change the game in their particular sector.
Innovating in Field of Work:
• Cindy is a force of nature. She regularly speaks at conferences and industry meetings about the need to disrupt the old world thinking when it comes to advertising and marketing
• Her passion project is Make Love Not Porn: raising awareness of the effects of porn on young people’s views of sex, and encouraging people to embrace what she calls ‘real world sex’ in all its messy glory.
• IfWeRanTheWorld works with brands and businesses to craft tailored, customized Action Programs designed to integrate social responsibility and business objectives, in order to do good and make money simultaneously, and resulting in Action Branding – the advertising of the future: communication through demonstration.
• She sums up her consulting approach as ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’ She works only with clients who want to change the game in their sector and looking for radical, breakthrough, innovative and transformative ways to do so.
Impact:
One client of IfWeRanTheWorld is Levi’s, who worked with IfWeRanTheWorld to create a campaign to revitalize the manufacturing town of Braddock, Pennsylvania.
Role Model:
• She is an active proponent for gender equality for women both in social media and speaking engagements and in her support of the 3% Conference. The 3% Conference is a gathering of the minds to make the case for more female creative directors in the field of advertising, but as Cindy pointed out “Everything is applicable to all industries and all diversity.” She clearly and boldly outlines how the future success of business exists in gender equality
• Cindy is open and honest about the difficulties of running a startup, using the hashtag #startupstress. This gives younger women a more realistic role model.
• Her work on Make Love Not Porn is particularly important to young women, as this is the group who suffer most from the impact of porn on young men. She encourages them to learn about what a ‘normal’ sex life is about and how to gain confidence rather than being influenced by the misguided beliefs of their young partners.
Reinvention / Risk / Momentum:
Cindy walked away from a highly lucrative position in the world of advertising to take on causes that meant something to her and where she felt she could make a difference.
“This is someone who is wise and generous as much as she is gracious and feisty. With Cindy, there is never a dull moment.”
— Scott Goodson, Founder of StrawberryFrog