StrawberryFrog Announces Its Plans to Hire More Moms

By Patrick Coffee 

It’s been a while since we posted on StrawberryFrog. We hear the agency has been working on some projects based in Dubai after making this year’s Super Bowl spot for Sun Trust, but the 50-plus employees in its New York office are quite busy.

The Frog’s latest work is blatantly self-promotional, but in a good way: the company has positioned itself as an ad agency friendlier to working mothers.

We think you’ll agree with ECD Shayne Millington, who notes that advertising can be “an intense career.” (We hear media can sometimes be a bit much as well, but what the hell would we know?)

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Before people start talking crap about this project, you can at least acknowledge that the matter at hand can present some very real challenges for “almost 50 percent of those working in the advertising industry,” thank you The New York Times.

This is obviously not to say that all women are mothers or that they should be expected in any way to play that role. But Scott Goodson does make some valid points in the Adweek writeup about the agency world being especially difficult for people with children, not to mention agencies hiring young hip folks to tell clients what moderately older people with completely different schedules, responsibilities and concerns might want to buy.

The project’s homepage is also a marketing effort for SG and its founder, what with the links to his podcast and the profiles of employees who are also parents.

But remember, this is an advertising agency working to stay competitive in an economy where this kind of thing gets attention for good reason, because quite a few companies across industries don’t even try to pretend that working moms do face a very different and specific set of career challenges despite the fact that–generally speaking here–they can do your job just as well if not better than you can.

And you got to look inside the office!

Now can we discuss how even the best companies usually don’t have any form of paternity leave? A friend of ours just had his first baby, and he was forced to use up a year’s worth of sick/vacation days just to get two weeks off. (It still wasn’t nearly enough time.)

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