Publicis Italy CCO Praised Female Cannes Judges for Their ‘More Emotional’ Approach

By Patrick Coffee 

Here it is, readers: the least surprising tweet of the 2017 Cannes Lions Festival.

That’s Israeli-American director Alma Har’el, founder of the Free the Bid group which launched last fall as part of an effort to get more women behind the camera for commercial work.

As you can see, she’s quoting Publicis global chief creative officer Bruno Bertelli, who also served as president of the Outdoor Cannes jury that gave its top award to Fearless Girl earlier this week.

According to one party who was there, he said this while sitting next to DDB North America CEO Wendy Clark, who Har’el later described as “RATIONAL.”

That stereotype persists in spite of pretty much everything.

A study of facial expressions involving 2,000 people around the world published earlier this year in public science journal PLOS One (Public Library of Science) found that, while the women who participated did smile more often than men, the dudes spent a lot more time frowning.

None of this justifies any sweeping generalizations about half the population, but if we’re gonna go there, one might use the study’s conclusions to say that men are actually the more emotional ones, given that anger and confusion tend to affect one’s behavior more than happiness.

Another study published last year found that, while women “outperform men on nearly all emotional intelligence measures,” there’s no gender gap when it comes to “emotional self-control,” which means rationality is not determined by gender. But you already knew that.

And the year is 2017, remember…

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