ROM - "The Immortal Membership"

As a female creative in a—here it comes—male dominated field, I’ve constantly had to work to speak up and be heard.

“Leaning in!” and “Taking your seat at the table!” are hard enough as a young woman, let alone a quiet one. At least, I thought I was just a quiet person. As it turns out, I’m also losing my hearing.

After a few hearing tests and discovering what an ENT is, I recently learned I was losing my hearing at an alarmingly rapid pace, and would never get it back. I didn’t just have a quiet voice, I had everyone else’s significantly turned down.

This immediately had me questioning just how vocal I’d have to be about my impairment. Did I have to tell coworkers in a silly little Slack message? Advertising has always felt like a safe place for misfits, but can you become too misfit for the misfits? We embrace thinking different—but I worried there would be an invisible limit on being different.

On the streetcar ride home after this news, it felt like my seat was stretching farther and farther away from the rest of the commuters—like that brilliant push of the wall in Spike Jonze’s Apple spot. But without the cool dancing.

Life started to feel like I was on my own muffled little island, drifting from land with every missed punch line and frustrated barista. I watched a lot of people become increasingly impatient with having to repeat themselves—which is hard to blame them for when your impairment is practically invisible.

This all made me acutely more aware of something I had always felt as a creative in this industry. We're often expected to be the funniest, loudest people in the room.

As one of the quiet ones, I was forced to ask myself: how do I make myself heard in an industry filled with loud creatives? That question has now more urgently shifted to: how do I hear in an industry filled with loud creatives?

I now wear hearing aids every day that are itchy as hell and make the world sound metallic, but I can hear almost all of what happens on a Zoom call. But that’s the thing: the magic of this job doesn’t happen on a Zoom call.

Our best ideas and builds are often in hallway solves, whispers on set with mouths full of sandwiches, café jam sessions, and desk walk-bys. So, what do you do if those are all your weakest moments?

How do you stay a cool creative who bought their T-shirt at a smelly thrift store without becoming a wet blanket who really needs the music turned down? How do you get heard, while trying to hear, without trying to sound this cute about it?

I’ve been working to find these answers on my own. Unfortunately, there’s no book out there titled “Hey Whipple, Hear This!” and Don Draper never had to change the filters on his hearing aids mid-pitch.

We often look to those most affected by an issue to solve the issue. Thankfully no one’s asking me to do that, but if I took a stab at it anyway, my answer would simply be: more patience and empathy.

In advertising, our job is to communicate messages, but in truth, we’re not always the best at actually communicating. If we slow down, look around, and speak up a little, we can all turn this place where we spend most of our hours into a better place to spend most of our hours.

And for those that expect the best creatives to be the loudest ones, try sitting closer to the quiet ones. We often make the best jokes, if you lean in and listen.

Also, stop whispering your office gossip. You’re just going to have to yell it from now on.