Advertising: a weapon for feminism

Mercedes Erra, Founder of BETC Euro RSCG, the leading French advertising agency, and executive president of Havas Worldwide, delivered a masterclass to students in the Sciences Po School of Communication.

The former French professor evoked the core of her profession: communication that changes constantly in order to innovate, create, and surprise. Change with respect of the public as a priority. “Communication, it’s not art.” she stressed, “ advertising doesn’t impose, it must persuade people, meaning first analyse them, understand them, and understand their interests.”

Mercedes Erra sees this constant need for change as an opportunity for innovation that allowed her to make a name for herself as a woman and immigrant in the conservative and macho advertising culture of the1990s. She uses her career as an example. Her successes, of which the greatest is “ to do better and better what she loves doing,” as well as the failures that allowed her to grow.

Feminist from the age of six, she fights for a more equal recognition of women’s work all around the world. Director of the Museum of the History of Immigration, she wants to make France a host country that is an example of integration. Founder of the BETC, she fights against prejudices in order to make advertisers proud of their work.