None of the agency’s employees will work on March 8th, aiming to raise awareness about the relevance of women in the communications industry.
Canela will also donate 8 hours for each team member to support initiatives that empower women entrepreneurs.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the communications agency Canela has taken a further step to emphasise the role of women in the communications sector. As part of this initiative, the entire agency will be out of the office (OOO) on March 8th. Supported by the agency About PR, founded and led by two women, this action is driven by both consultancies’ commitment to real equality, allowing all their employees to advocate for the importance of women in society on this day.
To demonstrate their commitment to women’s empowerment, the Canela team has automated an “Out of Office” email message, inspired by an Appletree campaign, explaining the reasons they will not be available to work on this date. While women represent 57% of leadership teams in PR agencies, according to ADC data, the average percentage of women on staff in PR agencies in Spain is 72.8%. This is precisely what Canela wants to highlight, as an agency with 84% women on its team, through this complete shutdown.
“Canela is an agency mostly run by women, and we understand the crucial role we play in such a fast-paced industry as communications. The same is true in journalism, advertising, and design… Therefore, we believe that a significant day like March 8th should be used to demand recognition, and the sector needs to better reflect the demographic reality of its workforce in leadership and senior roles, just like we do at Canela,” says Deborah Gray, Founder and Managing Director of Canela.
Additionally, to translate this commitment into a tangible initiative with a real positive impact, Canela Spain will donate 8 hours for every employee to initiatives that empower women, in collaboration with Coachability. Coachability Foundation is a nonprofit organisation focused on supporting women entrepreneurs in fragile economies by helping them develop professional projects through creativity. Thanks to this initiative, Canela Spain will donate a total of 248 hours in 2023 to support five development cooperation projects in Africa currently underway by the organisation. “Not only on March 8th, but throughout the year, in Spain and Portugal, we will extend this commitment to our fellow businesswomen because we believe in the need to work together to bring about real change,” Deborah Gray adds.
A long-term commitment
In 2022, Canela also sought to highlight the women working in the many professions related to communications, such as journalists, agency directors, copywriters, community managers, marketing specialists, and account directors. The agency also aimed to inspire other women starting their careers in the sector or those who have been in it for years but need support to continue growing and overcoming challenges. To achieve this, the agency collected testimonies from 36 women in the communications world, which were compiled into a book titled Comunicando Juntas (Communicating Together), coordinated by Canela. This campaign has recently been selected as a finalist for the 2023 SABRE EMEA Awards in the Iberia category.
