Episode 4: Visibility, pride and the magic of running

Check out Marty’s Campaign column and find out more about Outvertising on their website.

Louise Scodie – NABS 

This week our guest is Marty Davies. Marty is founder of Smarty Pants Consultancy, a flexible, strategy-first creative consultancy model specialising in creative strategy, customer activation and retention marketing. With Just Eat, Smarty Pants won best use of customer insights at the Engage Awards 2019 and the silver for Best Use of AI at the DMA Awards 2020. Marty is also joint CEO of Outvertising, the marketing and advertising industry’s LGBTQIA+ advocacy group, also the co-founder of Trans Plus Adland, a grassroots community group of trans non binary, gender nonconforming and intersex people across the world of marketing and advertising. Marty was named one of Campaign’s Future Leaders 2022 and Pitch Super Person 2023. As a trans non binary person, Marty is campaign magazine’s first transgender columnist. They write about LGBTQIA representation and inclusion with pieces like ‘is adspend funding an increase in LGBTQIA hate crime?’ and ‘being non binary in adland’, both of which I have read. They are excellent, you should check out the column. Marty, brilliant to have you here. Especially because you are such a super busy person. So thank you so much for coming on to the NABS podcast. It is wonderful to have you. How are you?

 

Marty Davis 

I’m good. I’m well. You brought up my full intro. Pretty much. Really nice to be able to speak with you today. How are you?

 

Louise Scodie – NABS 

Yeah, I’m good, thank you for asking. We had a lovely NABS team day yesterday. So I’m feeling very bolstered by that, being spurred on by the community and all of that kind of thing. Let’s dive straight in. I am curious, what does mental wellness that like to you?

 

Marty Davis 

Wow, yeah, this is an interesting one, isn’t it? I will first want to kind of turn the question back around and you actually and ask you that question. What did it mean to you? Well,

 

Louise Scodie – NABS 

I love this because no one’s asked me this before on this podcast. So thank you for asking. I think it looks like a state of mind where you’re able to really appreciate the positive, and have a bit of perspective around anything that’s a bit more challenging in your life. And it also looks like engaging in some activity to support yourself as well. So for me, if I’ve got some space for myself during the day, if I’ve had a nice coffee, if I’ve listened to a podcast, such as the NABS podcast, but if I’ve, you know, gone for a walk on a podcast, if my daughter has been fairly easy to deal with on the school run and leading up to it, then those are all of the elements that lead up to mental wellness for me. So it’s as much a state of mind as it is an active practice where I’m doing stuff to help myself. What about you?

 

Marty Davis

Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. That makes sense. I think for me, I’ve kind of think about the opposite of when I’m not feeling kind of well with my mental wellness. So when I felt kind of a lot of anxiety during the pandemic, for example, and really understood my anxiety and, and what that was, because it was very amplified by that. So when I’m not feeling as anxious as I did, then that I’m feeling more mentally well, or the kind of the state of depression that I’ve felt periods of my life, throughout my life, really, if I’m not feeling that intensity, and engaging in behaviours, that kind of indulgent, where I’m kind of, you know, not reaching out to people and spending more time alone, things like that, then I know that I’m more mentally well, so I kind of like think about the opposite a lot and try and identify the behaviours that mean that I’m slipping into being more mentally unwell.

 

And I think I’m constantly struggling to like kind of pull apart my kind of growing awareness of my neurodiversity, and mental wellness in a way that like embracing parts of what I believe is my ADHD, but also kind of recognising when parts of it become unhelpful. And so for example, becoming very hyper focused on an activity can be great, really rewarding, you get a lot of stuff done, but then it can be quite exhausting. So you’re really understanding that, and I think I relate to a lot what you were saying as well about finding space for yourself. And yeah, I think for me, it’s about feeling like I’m in my words, like I’m able to talk in an articulate way. I kind of really feel more mentally well, when I’m actually able to articulate myself very well and I’m able to write and I can write more easily. These are things that indicate my mental wellness. I really actually became very, I kind of very much embrace the kind of the medicine of, sounds a bit funny, but the meditative nature of art and being able to just be in that space and be quite quiet. And actually, I found that really, really helpful for my mental health. So I’ve now kind of kind of caught that bug. And I really want to do that more and bring that into my routine, as well. So it’s yes, finding that space to feel creative. When I’m actually really creative. I know that I’m mentally more well.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

it’s a bit chicken and egg, isn’t it? Because you’re more well, because you’re really creative. And then because you’re being creative, you’re more well, I find it a really interesting cycle, which makes me think of what you were saying about writing that you’re functioning well, when you’re writing well, but it also strikes me that because you have outlets where you can express yourself, such as the Campaign column, that that must be in some way then be bolstering your mental wellness in and of itself, because you’re able to do that.

 

Marty Davis

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It can also come at the other side of it, is that the pressure of it, the kind of the you feel like the there’s a responsibility and the looming deadline. It’s the feeling like you’re at uni, and you’ve got an essay deadline. I hate that. But it also is what motivates me. So yeah, it’s a, it’s really great to have that platform, though, honestly. And it’s a really good thing to feel that people read that and respond to it, and you feel that it can drive some change. And that makes me feel mentally, I’m in a better space, because I feel like there’s things that can be changed through it. And that, that feels amazing.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

But so much of the work that you’re doing is about activism. It’s about finding a platform, and then kind of speaking the truth of your experience and speaking for the trans community about the collective experience as well. And that’s a big responsibility. Right. So what are the effects on your mental wellness, both negative and positive, of taking on that huge responsibility?

 

Marty Davis

Yeah, I mean, it is, it does feel like a heavy weight, really. And I try not to, you know, I am very fortunate to be able to have this platform in many ways, and like the ability to write and the ability to speak like that. It’s just something that I, I find comes really well to me. So it’s my kind of creative outlet, right? So it’s how I can contribute.

 

But I do find it kind of a heavy responsibility, because you know, I’m a trans person, I’m not like

the trans person and the person that speaks for all trans people. So I find myself kind of sometimes tying myself in knots about not wanting to speak on behalf of a community, which is often what I’m sort of asked to do in many ways. So it is, it is quite a tricky thing to do. I think.

 

I think what’s interesting as well to me about LGBTQIA+ people, queer people, trans people, is we often the way I think about it’s we often develop sort of coping mechanisms as kids to be safe in a society that is quite unwelcoming towards us. And I think those coping mechanisms are things like people pleasing. So we kind of people please a lot. And that can be something that’s really hard to unlearn. And that is, yeah, that is something that is a really important thing to try and unlearn to actually have better mental health.

 

And I think so that these are things that our community in particular suffers from the ability to be able to move past people pleasing, and be ourselves in society, and that bettering our mental health as a result. Yeah, and I just, I think what’s interesting as well about our community is that, you know, it is very broad, very diverse. There are so many differing experiences and, you know, I can’t, I can’t really represent, I try my best.

 

The best way to kind of represent as many people as possible is to really kind of be open to hear another’s experiences and very different to your own. I you know, I’m fortunate in a way that I kind of like inhabit many letters or different letters and abandoned some letters, it’s just quite odd. You know, inhabiting sort of like being identifying as a gay man earlier in my life and then identifying… well, now I’m a trans person, trans non binary person with a bisexual identity. I just, I think that that has helped actually me in a way to kind of view feel different experiences at different points in time that I’ve been very fortunate to have experience. So I don’t know where I’m going with that really, just that it’s very hard. It’s very hard. I just, I’m a curious person naturally. Because I’m a planner, I’m a strategist. So I kind of think that that helps me to really soak up as much as I can, because I’m just interested in other people and their experiences. Yeah. Have I gone off your question?

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

No, I was just thinking, that’s fascinating. Because you’ve been on such a journey with your own identity. And thinking about something that’s talked about increasingly in our industry about if you can see it, you can be it, therefore the importance of role modelling. So having people in organisations, especially at the top, who are from different backgrounds, different experiences. Was your identity changing as you were understanding more about who you really were? Or were you seeing role models? Who was making you realise… oh, actually, I’m feeling more this way, rather than that way? I don’t know if I’ve expressed that question correctly. Do you know what I mean?

 

Marty Davis

No, I think it’s, yeah, no, I think I understand what you mean. So I think when I was when I was growing up, there was this thing that was called gay, and it was largely negative. And that was called in a negative way at school. But there were, you know, popular public figures and TV shows that kind of really explored what gay meant, and then that I felt very much that that was me. And so having that role modelled or seeing it in the world, seeing it in media, really, was helpful and informative to my own identity of being able to kind of feeling positive about that, and being able to embrace it by seeing people in media or people in my life be successful. With that, as part of who they were.

 

But there wasn’t, really, and I think what was great about labels I talked about a lot, the labels are great, because you find community through them, because people gather around that label, and then you can find your community. But what’s also quite tricky about labels is it can feel like a box that you then form around you. And I felt that I sort of kind of inhabited that, that gay male box, and didn’t really reconsider that was less fully right. And it felt sort of better than where I was. But really, it wasn’t quite right. And it was only through then understanding more people’s experiences and being curious and seeing more labels, new data, new labels, that I hadn’t seen a more visibility and media of like trans non binary people in particular, that made me realise, oh, actually, this is this is somewhere where I really resonate. So I think it’s really important to have those role models.

 

And it’s actually one of the reasons why I think I personally, I’m so grateful to have this platform, with, you know, Outvertising, and also with, with Campaign magazine, for example, being the first transgender columnist and you know, I was actually speaking to people about it, should it be that the framing of that is first transgender columnist. And some people would advise not, you know, you’re more than that, but I’m really strongly in favour of being very loud about that. Because it’s really needed.

 

We need to have visibility for other people in our industry and beyond. And I’m very happy to be visible, because I know how important and powerful it was for me. So yeah, and I’m not you know, I’m very proud of who I am. And every part of myself I’m not, you know, pride is all about ridding yourself of shame. I’m not shameful about any part of my identity. You know, historically I have been, right, but I think that’s what’s really important to model being really proud and loud about your who you are.

 

 

Louise Scodie – NABS  15:52

That’s really interesting. So there’s been a movement, a really structured movement to get more women on panels, and to get women to take up space on panels and to not have shame about that presence on that panel. And maybe they’re not saying enough. Is there a similar movementsthat you know, have to get more LGBTQI plus on panels and to get them bolstered with the same kind of confidence?

 

Marty Davis

 

I’m always personally trying to identify people that I feel have a unique voice and an interesting perspective, and try and encouraging them to, and funneling them into kind of an op ed piece for your Campaign or whatever it might be, or an opportunity on a panel. But yeah, it is interesting how so many people are great, you know, people just are naturally nervous about that. I think everybody is. And some people actually don’t want to do that, either. It’s not where they want to be. But I think it would be a good idea. That was one of the things I want to do generally is find more ways for our queer and trans talent to be able to be elevated in the industry. And that’s one way right on, you know, we need that perspective. Absolutely.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Sure. And I think where all of your advocacy and voluntary and campaigning work shows that there are so many ways to get involved and have a voice. So even if you don’t necessarily want to be the front of stage sitting on a panel, there are things you can do to kind of help elevate the community and to get a bigger share of voice overall. You’re doing all of this while also being a business founder and a very successful business founder at that. So what do you think of the mental wellness challenges of running a business in our industry, and with you having the background and doing all of this other really valuable, important stuff, and the challenges of being a business founder – are those compounded by being a transgender person?

 

Marty Davis

I think what’s interesting about this industry and like why I set up my business in the first place, is, historically I’ve found our industry to be quite a toxic place for our community to be in. And the reason my planning brain around how I’ve kind of come to understand how that wasn’t quite right for me, and how it was sort of inhibiting my growth, in many ways, was this feeling that I needed to perform in a certain way in order to be successful and my own kind of femininity, queerness, whatever you want to call it, that was there was a lot of micro aggressions to kind of try and check me from that. It’s telling me maybe don’t be so gay in this meeting, or you know, all this kind of stuff. And it kind of like prevented me from progressing to a certain degree.

 

But also I found that our industry, if you’re on the agency side, there’s sort of a weird toxic imbalance between agency and client. In many ways where you’re kind of being a people pleaser, and our community is amazing and people pleasing. We’re very good at it. We’ve learned it from a very young age so you can actually start to come in. I started to view that as my strength I was what you know, I was really good at my job because I’m amazing at people pleasing. I didn’t call it that, but I was able to kind of really empathise with anyone, be anybody to anybody, and convince them that we have what they what we needed to sell them whatever it was.

 

But it was really bad for my personal growth because I was leaning into a coping mechanism that actually was really harmful for me to continue to be this people pleaser. So, liberating myself from our industry, or when I did you know, I started my own consultancy. I felt then a little bit more detached from kind of playing that people pleaser role in an agency. I work directly into marketing teams, which felt like I was more able to have a much more healthy relationship with some key clients. And I’ve been doing that for the last five years.

 

And I think that that’s the reason why I started my own consultancy was just a feeling of not growing personally and professionally. So, so yeah, that’s, that’s the benefit of and that’s why I really enjoy doing it. It is a challenge, though, like running my own consultancy. I mean, I’m quite fortunate in many ways that, you know, I’ve had some really great clients, I’m kind of working into marketing teams. So there’s a lot of infrastructure within that and kind of team teamwork. And that team infrastructure that you kind of are borrowing from in order to maintain your own sense of mental wellness, and for other people that kind of work with me. And I’ve worked with subcontractors, and partner businesses, and we all are all kind of encountering the same challenges because we’re all sort of, you know, small teams and trying to work with each other.

 

So we create our own structures really to support each other. So we might create, there’s one thing that I join once a month, which is a lot of contractors and consultants, kind of join three meetings in that one day, and we check in with each other, and we’re really vulnerable with each other, and we kind of help each other out. And there’s these kind of structures that we all kind of create as these people that have kind of gone out on our own, to do something that just feels much better for ourselves. So you kind of have to do a lot of that.

 

And with my subcontractors, I think what I try and do as well as I try and meet, you know, meet them in person, once a week, I try and what I try to do, which I really am very, very firm on doing this is, I don’t want to prioritise my business’s success over somebody else’s mental wellness or what they need. So I’m very honest and candid with people about that, I just want you to be happy and get if this no longer works for you, then that’s fine, I will help you into what will work for you. Obviously, there’s, there’s negative sides to that from my business perspective, but ultimately, I just think that it will work out in the end. And I don’t want to be that be that business like I found myself in before which is prioritising their needs as a business above my personal needs. Because I think if you just really just send to people, everything will work out in the end, and everyone will be happy and business will thrive. So yeah, that’s, that’s how I’ve been tackling up.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Firstly, the theme of community helping to support your mental wellness is coming through really strongly in what you’re saying. We will flip back to the top when you were talking about anxiety and lockdown and being linked to isolation and that lack of community and then how are you working today where even though essentially, you’re a solo business proprietor, you are making sure you have structures in place to connect with other people. And you are connecting with the people that are working for you as well. And being really thoughtful about that, that NABS is hugely passionate about the power of community and bolstering mental wellness. And it’s amazing to hear that you’ve got all of that in practice. The other thing that’s really impressive is the fact that you’re saying to people, I’m not going to push your mental wellness just so that, you know, my business can get massive at your expense. And I think that benefits you because ultimately people just feel really looked after by that. And if you feel looked after, then you’re more likely to want to do a good job, right?

 

Marty Davis

Yeah. Yeah. No, I have this like vision in my head of like having this, you know, this big kind of consultancy agency offering in like five years’ time or something. And the mental wellness is the huge part of inclusion in mental wellness. And you give everybody the opportunity for weekly therapy sessions and coaching and all this kind of stuff. And like it does happen in some places, but it’s really not like it’s not the main thing that is being prioritised. And I just I really believe that if the government actually invested in mental health properly in this country and everybody as standard was offered free therapy weekly, how much more successful would our country be? Like, economically? How much more well and happy we would all be? I think it’s the key to so much.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Oh, completely. I mean, that’s, that’s just so NABS. And when you’re ready to take your business stratospheric, and you want to build in all of the mental wellness work, come and chat to NABS, we’ll help you out. We have therapy referral at NABS. So if you feel that you would benefit from that, then give us a call. And we can help to get the wheels in motion on that. So that you don’t necessarily have to wait for a long time on the NHS, which is a real barrier for people at the moment. Certainly that process of supporting your wellness on an ongoing basis, and not just waiting for things to get to a crisis point is just crucial, isn’t it? Yes, absolutely. Now, it’s not just about trans people and people from the LGBTQIA+ community fighting for themselves. It’s about allyship as well and allyship is key. And there’s a lot of thoughts bandied about about allyship, but what’s the truth of it? How can people in our industry be really useful allies?

 

Marty Davis

 

I’m really trying to remind myself that it’s, I’m not just I’m not seeking allyship from others, I’m also being an ally to others or trying to, and that’s also within our community. So how am I being an ally to intersex people? How am I being an ally to asexual people? And I’ve been trying to develop my own education in terms of what does prejudice look like for someone that’s asexual? What does prejudice look like someone that’s intersex? What are the barriers? What are the similarities? It’s a really interesting one, because it’s, I think allyship’s just so hard. It takes so much effort and energy to be to be learning about other experiences and working out how is it that I kind of I’m doing the right thing all the time. For others? It’s so much energy. And I’ve got so much want to do it, but I’m constantly failing at it. I think that’s, that’s what’s really interesting to me.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

And that’s the important thing, right?

 

Marty Davis

Exactly. You’re trying and that’s the important thing. But I think that’s the thing, like you’re never going to be a perfect ally, you’re just never going to you just need to get comfortable with being somebody that is constantly trying, you’re committing to I think allyship really is about committing to like a curiosity and a learning mindset and committing yourself to knowing that today your behaviour is not as good as it could be tomorrow. And that’s fine. And there’s nothing bad about that. It’s just how can you change your behaviour in a tangible way that can make somebody else feel more included tomorrow and it’s quite easy to feel criticised when you realise that you’re not you haven’t been being the best ally to certain communities, whether that’s within our community, whether that’s your cis, straight people kind of, and you know, that allyship towards trans people and LGBT people, or the intersectionality of our community.

 

You know, our, our Outvertising Live onference wasn’t very accessible. For example, you know, we didn’t have signing onstage and things like that, and and also, you know, I’m very conscious that, you know, we can we can be, can find it difficult to be the best allies to our black and brown colleagues as well, like, how do we do that better? And I’m very conscious that we’re not getting that completely right at the moment.

 

One of the reasons like with Outvertising, for example, there wasn’t a lot of trans and non binary people in our community. And I really wanted to work hard to make that better by creating Trans Plus Adland was actually part of creating a grassroots community that could then kind of start to interact more with Outvertising and find that there was community being brought in to Outvertising. And so that’s one of the reasons why I set up Trans Plus Adland. But that sort of needs to really happen for our black and brown colleagues as well. And for people that are, you know, disabled or neurodiverse. And it’s, it’s just so hard. It’s so hard.

 

But I would just say that it’s about like curiosity, curious mindset, and removing your kind of barriers of, I’m feeling attacked, you know, I’m feeling like, I’ve been trying to show up and I’m getting all I’m getting is attacked that you just need to remove that. And just listen. And I learned more recently, while I’m trying to practice more recently is the act of like, pausing. So pausing and sort of experiencing like with, with mindfulness, your emotions, but not really reacting to them in the moment. So if you’re feeling defensive, if you’re feeling attacked, like experience that think, Oh, why am I feeling attacked? Why am I feeling defensive? And just pause, take a beat, and then work out what do you want to do about that the next day, because it’s unlikely that you’re going to want to lash out in that moment, and you might kind of have better thoughts about how to improve your own allyship as a result.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

I imagine that would also be a useful strategy if you were trying to do some allyship on social media say, and then somebody sent you message that you felt attacked by or they were particularly unkind. Should you take a moment and pause? You won’t necessarily react out of upset or defensiveness, which might not do you any good in the long term.

 

Marty Davis

Yeah, I think so. I think I mean, social media in particular, is sort of driven to get us to engage in that moment. Yeah. And it’s, it’s trying to poke us the whole time to react a lot of the time with negative stimulation. So you really have to moderate yourself with that it’s quite easy to get drawn into it. I’ve had a few kind of like Twitter pile-ons as well. And that can be a really uncomfortable experience. Because you’re just immersing in waves and waves of negativity. Yeah. And if you’re anything like me, as well, you kind of also want to see it all. Yeah, because you want you want to see the positives and like, thank people, because not thanking people is rude. And so you end up going through everything. And it’s really awful for your mental health. So yeah, I don’t I’m not the best person to listen to on how to manage social media.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Probably just walk away, walk away from the screen, go and do some allyship in real life instead.

 

Marty Davis

That’s what I would tell people, I wouldn’t do it myself, because I just don’t, but I would, I’m telling myself to do it.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

You’re doing plenty of other things. I think you don’t have to feel upset about that. You’ve spoken before about really being active in supporting the mental wellness of people that are working for you. What extra mental wellness support you think people from the LGBTQIA+ community need at work and how can managers best support them?

 

Marty Davis

Think iit’s a real challenge, isn’t it? I don’t know if I’m, I’m the best that kind of managing my own mental health, never mind the people that work for me as well, to be honest, I’m trying but you know, the best to kind of do better, so that I can definitely do better. And I think everybody’s find themselves in that situation.

 

I think we’re in this weird moment where we’ve had this pandemic that’s kind of really exposed, the lack of a solid kind of mental wellness. And we’ve got businesses scrambling to kind of realise what does that actually mean in practice to be able to look after people’s mental health you know, and I suppose the most cynical views on it, you know, there’s a there’s a webinar and there’s this and there’s like a, you know, an afternoon off here and there’s certainly other and it’s not, it’s not systemic, so like how do you how do you kind of tackle the systemic nature of our industry and how, how it is harmful to our mental health and I think it goes back to that. I do feel like our industry is very toxic in terms of its toxic balance between agency relationship and client relationship.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Having to work all the hours for example, because of client demands.

 

Marty Davis

Yeah, constant client demands that have to be satisfied, because the agency really needs it at the moment, you know, our industry is kind of suffering a lot with retention, so people are leaving. So that’s more strain on everybody else. And then that makes it even worse.

 

And then also just agencies are finding it more difficult to kind of secure work from clients as well, because more clients are taking, taking work internal, internally, and also to consultants and others. So I think it’s is really kind of a force of multiple factors. It’s a, it’s a really difficult thing to to do, but because it’s systemic change, right, so how do you how do you really tackle that? And it has to start from, you know, industry bodies, kind of raising the awareness of the kind of the actual core issue.

 

Things like the All In survey are really good, because they really do kind of look at the do a health check of the industry in terms of that. And obviously, we see that our community in particular is, you know, really not thriving and industry. Yeah, so something like almost half people that identify as LGBT, are affected by stress and anxiety and mental conditions in our industry, and over one quarter intend to leave that company within the next 12 months.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Yeah. Actually, the proportion of people identifying as LGBTQIA+ in the survey was higher than the UK average. But at C suites, that really drops off. So that would speak to your point about retention being a particular issue with the community. It was really interesting to me that the All In action was to improve the experience of LGBTQIA+ talent, use gender pronouns in your organisation, which seems like a good start, but also seems from listening to you that there’s an awful lot more that needs to be done. And that will just be like a very small entry point.

 

Marty Davis

It is a very small entry point. It is a very much a single-minded call to action, ask, that should be relatively easy to implement. But it by no means solves the countless issues that there are with mental health for our community. But it is an important one. So it’s definitely an you know, it’s an important one for trans and non binary colleagues.

 

And, you know, within our, within my community that I created with my co founder, Jack’s, for Trans Plus Adland, we’ve got many people who experienced that misgendering and dead naming and all sorts of all sorts of things within our industry. And it’s just, you know, it is just relentless feeling, feeling sort of, it feels very sad to be misgendered.

 

And you kind of leave your your body when somebody does or even, you know, it doesn’t matter how intentional or not it is. It’s very disorientating. You just don’t feel seen, you don’t feel able to be yourself, I feel. So it’s a really, really important one that’s really easy for people to kind of work on and solve and what I’ve started to do as well. And I read notes that nobody does this is introducing yourself when in person with your pronouns. And nobody does this. It’s just a really important thing to start doing to make people feel more seen more included. But yes, like, yeah, it’s a really, really small, easy thing for people to do. That’s why we chose it as like a single thing to ask the industry a couple of years ago, but there’s still a long way to go just get even getting that one done. Right.

 

So how how, how do we tackle this? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m a queer trans person, volunteering my time trying to do what I can and feeling like the industry has let me down myself with my mental health. So I didn’t know how to fix the world on this. But I really am determined to try and continue to… I’m very, I’m always very hopeful. And I’m always someone that is always looking for solutions and then trying to find strategies to kind of put in place but for me this was huge. And it’s, you know, a systemic thing that can’t be tackled by any one organisation, any one agency, any one body any one survey, any one panel, anyo ne, you know, webinar. It’s important that we keep talking about it. But yeah, where’s the where’s the real stuff? Functional action.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

It feels to me that it’s taken years, absolute years, to get women to the position where they are in the industry, and we’re still not as advanced as we need to be. So if we take that is the experience of let’s say, we were the canaries in the coal mine, when it comes to people from underrepresented groups being in the industry, so then if we translate our experience in terms of how long it’s taken to the experience of other communities, then inevitably, it’s going to take quite a lot of time as well. Because these things, there’s so much resistance, and there’s so much systemic work, as you say, that needs to be done. But I think the important thing is that we’ve got people actually talking about it and fighting for it. So maybe there is some hope.

 

Marty Davis

I see it as like multiple pronged attacks, right? Multiple strategies. And one of the ways that I’m in my business trying to tackle that is by creating my own business, create my own structure, to kind of do the work I want to do. But then there are, you know, these, like, you know, huge agency networks that are, you know, they’re not going anywhere, and they really can drive a lot of change that then they can really invest and drive change there as well. So you can create new entities that have all of this built in from the beginning, and trying to do that from kind of the start. And then you can kind of try and change these big kind of organisations, you kind of need to do everything. Because it’s such a big problem, and it needs multiple solutions.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

But one thing can feed into the other. So to use an analogy that I think is okay. Phoebe Waller-Bridge couldn’t find a decent role for herself. So she wrote Fleabag, she’s now involved with James Bond, which is probably the most like machismo traditionally anti-feminist film, body of films that you could find. And but somehow, by just being her authentic self and being like super feminist and talking about, you know, authentic sexuality and all of those kinds of subjects. She’s made it into the mainstream.

 

Marty Davis

Yeah, she’s created something that went into mainstream and then also brought itself into the mainstream. Yeah, I do you like that I saw a read about a song I read. I read it, I read about that. And I think that’s really important that she’s able to do both those things. And that’s it. That’s exactly the kind of strategy.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

So my analogy worked, excellent. You were saying that the adland community has, in some ways let you down with your mental health, as it has done with so many people, which is why NABS is here to help boost people back up again. But are there any ways in which the online community has lifted you up? Or continues to lift you up?

 

Marty Davis

The structures that our kind of queer community has created.  So, you know, Mark Ruckus , who was inhabiting my role before and obviously created Outvertising? You know, I met, I met Mark, before they created Outvertising, being interviewed for a job actually. And we kept in touch that way. But you know, he created this, this structure that is Outvertising that I felt lifted up by, and that hopefully, you know, while leading it, it’s helped to lift up others. So we’ve created our own structures like that.

 

And, you know, like Trans Plus Adland , like I said, was very much a needed community structure to help lift up our community where people try out new names, try out new pronouns, we support each other with the microaggressions that we experience. So we create our own structures as a queer community to lift each other up. But what’s been really great as well as to be have that industry, that industry recognition and to be lifted up by industry.

 

So Campaign magazine, for example, you know, like giving us that voice of that column, I felt very lifted up and I feel like it lifts up our community within our industry. And any time we get asked to be brought in and kind of do talks and things like that, I feel where we are lifted up and we are lifts up the people that are in those agencies because they get to kind of meet more queer people and see that perspective? So there are multiple ways in which we are lifted up and I feel lifted up.

 

And what was the statement that we did as well? This June put together what we call an industry intervention. When for Pride month where we asked brands essentially to stand their ground this Pride month because we were seeing the examples from Target and America and Bud Light, where brands were kind of abandoning their, their transgender influencers and…

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

That was awful. Yeah.

 

Marty Davis

And obviously, we’ve since seen as well that with Dylan Mulvaney, they were not supported in any way by Bud Light, which is awful. And there’s no kind of self-regulation or, you know, legislation even in this country that would prevent that from happening to our influencers. But that was another moment of feeling, I think we felt, as I mean, I from speaking for myself, I quite felt quite vulnerable us putting that out there in the world, because we were putting that out there asking for endorsement of it, and what if nobody endorsed it?

 

But people did endorse that, and then platformed that, and that was then covered a lot of industry press as well. So we did feel lifted up by being vulnerable and asking people to lift us up, and they did. So I’m very hopeful that, you know, the industry is there wanting to make substantial change for our community. And we need to remove our cynicism a lot of the time to embrace that. Yeah, that’s really what I want us to do.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

NABS were happy to endorse the statement. And it’s great to hear the positive effect it’s had.

 

Marty Davis

Very thankful that you did that really early on as well. Thank you.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Yes. We’re friends with Outversiting. And we really believe in what you’re doing, and really happy to be an ally and a partner with you. It’s been such a lovely chat, we just have one final question. What’s the lesson you’ve learned about how to support yourself?

 

Marty Davis

What’s a lesson I’ve learned about how to support myself? A lesson I’ve learned about how to support myself, I’ve realised that I absolutely need to go for a run. And this is a really strange thing for me to say. Because as I was someone that always used to take pride in the fact that if I was if I was going to miss the bus or miss the train, I would not run for it. I’m not sorry. That’s how.

 

But the pandemic, really, you know, when we had that, like one hour jail time, yeah, we could go out, go out into the world. And we had to be exercising, though. Otherwise, it was not sanctioned or whatever. Yeah. That kind of encouraged me to start running. And that really helped me through my anxiety through the pandemic. And I now feel like if I’m not running, if I’m not fine, finding a time to be doing like a 5k run, then it’s not good for me. And I haven’t done it for about a month because of everything going on with Outvertising and Pride month. So I’ve been really neglecting my mental health and my mental wellness this month, which I think is why it’s so ironic that I’m doing this podcast with you today.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

But maybe this is going to give you the gee up you need to put on your trainers… when we finish this record, I go for that run.

 

Marty Davis

I think this is what I was just saying to myself, before I was like, yeah, this is this is the kick, I need to like, reclaim all of this mental wellness that I had. So I will do that. And yeah, the trainers, I’ll dust them off.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

Please do. So you need to go for a run, I need to go for a swim, seems like an opportune moment to sadly end our chat so that we can go exercise and support our mental wellness. And I love the fact that you’re talking about exercise in terms of mental wellness and not like oh, you know, I need to go and get fit or whatever. Like obviously those are the benefits but it’s about doing something for your mental headspace, isn’t it?

 

Marty Davis

Yeah, absolutely. I have my best ideas on the run. I wish I could actually just not think about anything, but I do. It just opens up everything. So yeah.

 

Louise Scodie – NABS

You’ve been really authentic and so generous in sharing the truth of your experience, and especially when you’re talking about the experience of being misgendered and how that makes you feel. And that was such a valuable insight because I’ve never had that explained to me so honestly and so beautifully before. So thank you. And also the importance of the power of community coming through as well to support mental wellness and the importance of curiosity and starting a journey to fellowship as well. So thank you so much.

 

If you want to find out about Outvertising, then just is it outversiting.org It is yes. So head to Outvertising.org to org and have a look at their fantastic work and how you can get involved and follow them. Marty it’s been an absolute pleasure. Have a great day, go for a run. I look forward to hearing all about the ideas that you have got on today’s run.

 

Marty Davis

Thank you for having me on.