What
do
the
London
Symphony
Orchestra,
Ernst
&
Young
and
Award
School
all
have
in
common?
They
all
use
a
blind
selection
process
for
recruiting
talent.
The industry’s first blind treatment process
Anonymised selection across world-class organisations has successfully increased diversity and improved commercial outcomes without sacrificing team cohesion.
Working with ECDs & EPs, we have developed a process that follows the traditional treatment approach as closely as possible.
You have full autonomy to choose three directors to brief, all from production companies you trust.
Participating agencies and clients select a brief for the experiment.
Just like the normal treatment process, agency selects multiple directors they would like to brief. At least one must be a woman.
Producers sign NDA to protect the anonymity of responses.
The creative team brief the directors. To ensure a controlled experiment, no leading questions or imagery are shared at this point.
Directors will have the opportunity to ask questions and suggest ideas through an anonymised document, getting vital direction for their treatment ahead of submission without names being revealed.
Treatments are submitted blind - no name, no production company, no recognisable “house style” symbols or formats. It’s just the work.
Agency and client will work together to select a winning treatment to progress, measuring the gender split in the selection.
Once the job is awarded, directors & EPs meet the creative team to further refine direction to ensure the end product meets the vision.
Once all briefs entered have been awarded, we will analyse the results to reveal the impact of blind bidding on the selection process.
We interviewed over 20 female directors to
uncover the truth of being a director in 2026.
All quotes have been anonymised to protect their voices.
The full list can be found here.
Anecdotally, we’ve long known that fewer women work as commercial directors in Australia.
More troublingly, female directors often struggle to win bids against male counterparts with more extensive reels — creating a self-perpetuating cycle where less work means fewer opportunities.
We wanted to validate these patterns with data…
…except we had a problem. No comprehensive dataset exists.
So we built our own analysis to measure the number of female directors in Australia and their output using publicly available data from robust industry sources as proxies.
We set out to define two key statistics. The first was director representation. Our methodology was simple and manual: we reviewed the websites of major Australian production companies and surveyed their director rosters. The full list of companies surveyed can be found here. Think we’ve missed someone? Let us know.
The second key statistic measured work output: the proportion of television commercials directed by women. To determine this, we reviewed Campaign Brief articles published between 2019 and July 2026. Campaign Brief was used because it publishes full credits, including director attribution; is free to access; and has an archive consistent enough to compare across years. Alternatives were considered and ruled out: BestAds and LBB either restrict automated access or sit behind membership, while award databases capture only work submitted for judging rather than work made. The period begins in 2019 because this is the extent of Campaign Brief’s publicly available archive, not a chosen start point.
Gender was determined using publicly available professional information and manually reviewed. Directors whose gender could not be confidently determined, and credits attributed to collectives or duos rather than named individuals, were excluded from percentage calculations rather than assumed.
These two measures give us an important comparison. The first counts who is available — directors listed on the rosters of Australian production companies. The second counts whose work is represented — advertisements published in industry trade press. Comparing them helps indicate whether underrepresentation may originate in the available talent pool or in booking decisions.
A gap of 7.59 percentage points.
While we acknowledge this analysis has limitations, the disparity is significant and consistent with anecdotal evidence.
The gap suggests that women directors are not only underrepresented on rosters; they also have fewer opportunities to build their reels, which directly affects their competitiveness for future work.
This warrants deeper investigation into how to increase women’s participation in bidding and address the systemic barriers that shape selection decisions.
We intend to be as transparent as possible with our findings — you can find the raw data here. Feel free to explore, and flag with us any mislabelled, incorrect or missing entries.
Throughout the process, we have received a lot of feedback, builds and questions.
Here are a few answers.
We agree — which is why agencies and clients maintain full autonomy in hand-picking the three trusted directors and production companies before the process goes blind. You are never choosing a random treatment; you are choosing between vetted, high-caliber directors who you invited because their reel proved they could deliver.
In doing so, people can make a decision based on the ideas in the treatment — it’s a more pure reaction to the work without any subconscious bias attached to a name, gender or race.
Our belief, and the belief of many in this industry, is that you should not invite directors to treat if they never had a chance to win.
You will have full visibility of each director's past work before briefing. Agencies and clients select and brief the directors as usual based on their reel, reputation and production company. The blind phase only applies to the written treatment submission, ensuring the final choice is made purely on the creative vision.
Today, women often lose out because they lack work in specific categories even though they have the skill. This process uses existing reels to get on the bid but lets the treatment win the job, helping female directors build broader reels for the future.
The blind restriction applies strictly to the creative selection of the treatment. Agency producers act as the firewall, invited to sign an NDA and have full visibility of all bids. This enables the producer and production company to liaise and negotiate behind the scenes whilst ensuring the creative team evaluates the ideas purely on merit while staying within budget.
Subjective measures of chemistry often look very different for men and women. Other industries — like orchestras and consulting companies — that have undertaken blind selection processes have successfully increased diversity and improved commercial outcomes without sacrificing team cohesion.
Fair Treatment simply ensures the best idea wins first, building chemistry on the foundation of shared creative vision during the post-treatment stage.
Fair Treatment encourages more women to be on bids as there has to be at least one female on the shortlist.
Furthermore, it doesn't just encourage more women onto the pitch list; it removes the unconscious bias that prevents them from winning the job.
When more women make more work, they build their reels across broader categories and make them more competitive for future pitch lists across the entire industry.
Communication happens via an anonymised document during the Q&A stage. Directors submit questions and suggest creative thoughts digitally, giving agencies the answers they need without revealing names or gender signals.
The anonymised Q&A document forces cleaner, clearer communication. It places greater emphasis on the core brief and allows ideas to be interrogated purely on their creative logic rather than salesmanship.
Anonymised selection has proven successful across world-class organisations — including the London Symphony Orchestra, Ernst & Young, and AWARD School. Removing gender signals consistently shifts outcomes and surfaces top-tier talent in other categories — given the problem we face in advertising, we strongly believe it’s worth a try.
Ultimately, this initiative is designed as a live experiment. Even in a scenario where numbers shift incrementally, participating agencies actively contribute to industry research, provide constructive pitching opportunities and establish more intentional shortlisting practices.
This is not an overhaul (don’t worry). There are great things about our existing system and amazing people in our industry.
Fair Treatment is a targeted experiment to shine a light on where unconscious bias impacts director selection, following the traditional treatment approach as closely as possible.
In the short term, it’s a live research project that tests bias while helping directors build their reels.
In the long term, it creates more opportunities for diverse voices and encourages agencies and clients to be more intentional when building their initial pitch lists.
