Coffee with Fancy founder Katie Keating

Katie Keating

Age: 50

Co-founder of Fancy NYC

New York City / London Zoom 

Describe your career path in two or three sentences including any twist or turns ending with where you are now. 

I'm a creative director. My background is copywriting. I came to New York straight out of school and spent the next 17 years working in, and moving up, the ranks of global blue chip agencies. 

And then in 2011, Erica Fite (also a creative director who I met years earlier while we worked at Clinique during my one and only client-side stint) started Fancy. We always had this idea that if we were in charge, ‘things would be different and so much better.’ But we were the breadwinners of our families and couldn't just walk out and start an ad agency.  

And then, in 2011, Erica had this opportunity to work with an upstart brand, very much in its infancy, that was looking for funding from Unilever Ventures. We designed a full branding and advertising campaign spec to present to Unilever, and it sailed up through the food chain there. The founder got her funding and asked if we would be her agency.  

So here the one thing we said we needed in order to go for it just landed in our lap. We knew we’d regret it if we just let it float away. Besides, we thought, if it all blows up, we can go back to the big agency world and that'll be fine. And so that was 10 years ago, and we haven't gone back.  

Why is it important to you to be 100% woman-owned and operated?  

In 2011, the 3% Movement had just gotten started and it was bringing to light the fact that only 3% of creative directors were women. Meaning 97% of the advertising targeting the group responsible for 80% of buying decisions (women!) was being conceived, created, and approved by men. We thought this was complete insanity—especially when you consider the buying power of women and how most advertisements are targeted to them.  

We also realised we weren't going to change the entire industry from inside one of these giant agencies. But we could begin to affect change by starting our own. 

Another thing we realized when looking around at the 3% of women who were creative directors, was that there weren’t very many older ones. In 2011, I was 40, and Erica was 46 and getting fired was only a matter of time. Eventually we’d be be too expensive or too old.  

Honestly, everybody gets fired all the time in advertising. It's not really that big a deal if you're 30 because you'll just get another job. But when you're fired in your 50s it's a lot harder to go find another job.  

So, it sounds completely bonkers, but in order to have some financial security for ourselves, and control over our careeds, we had to actually quit our jobs and start something new.  

And that’s what we did. Our focus on the over 40 population was a natural outgrowth of our focus on women, because we were in it, and we saw the benefits of it, as well as problems that needed attention.  

We thought we had an opportunity to affect some real change while helping brands widen their targets.   

What are the challenges of establishing yourself as the agency that targets women and specifically 40+ women? 

When we decided to push a little harder on advertising to women over 40, we surveyed a bunch of our clients, old and new and asked a consultant to reach out to potential clients. Everybody thought it was a terrific idea - because, I think they reacted first as people, on an emotional level, especially if they happened to be a woman over 40.  

But then they’d take a step back, and look at the proposition from a marketing person's perspective -  which sometimes can be in conflict with who they are as a person - and their response was Yes, great idea but don't make it your sole focus of your business because it might not be enough to sustain you. And that was really good advice. Because if we had, we might not be in business today. 

Even some brands that were warm to the idea, when push came to shove, they chickened out. They were worried they’d alienate the younger crowd. Whether or not that was who was actually buying.  

There’s an old-fashioned notion of this 25-28-year-old pinnacle - that the younger women want to age up, the older ones want to age down.  

Well, in the survey that we did we found that women over 40 are pretty happy with the way they feel at their age. In fact, 80% of them feel cooler, yonger, or sexier than they expected.

Thankfully, these days we're seeing a lot of change on the part of marketers.  

There are all these brands that are created specifically for this 40+ age group, tons of menopause brands, tons of women's health brands, even beauty brands are now being designed for women over 40. These brands are small, so they really need to make a splash. They need to be provocative, they need to stand up for something to stand out.  

Then you have bigger brands and more established brands looking at the situation going, Whoa, women over 40 really do want something that's targeted to them. And I think it's really helping to push that needle for those bigger brands. So it's an exciting time right now. 

What lessons can your agency teach companies wanting to keep and / or hire more women in senior roles? 

We knew exactly why women were leaving the industry. So we really set out to provide a place that would be the anti that, where you could fit your job into your life and not your life into whatever was leftover from your job. We wanted to create a place that worked for the way women want to work.  

There’s so much talent out there, it's a missed opportunity.

So many women who left traditional big agencies said I'm just not gonna deal with this way of life, I'm not going to be made to feel guilty, because I'm racing to relieve the nanny at five, or am taking a class, or whatever the situation is.  

And I think in the past, they've just had to figure out something else to do, whether it was to be a stay at home mom, or move to a different industry, or work part time somewhere. Advertising has really never been a part time situation, except it is for the people who work with us, because that’s the way we've structured the agency and structured the accounts and structured the way people work on them.  

And consequently, we're able to work with “grownups” who don't need their hand held all the time. They're very good at their jobs and they're very efficient. So it works for the people who want to work with us, because they get to be in charge of their life and their time. As long as the work gets done, you have the ultimate flexibility.  

And it works for our clients because they get very senior talent that they may not be able to afford at another agency, even at a big agency, because, unless you have just millions and millions of dollars to throw at your advertising, you're not getting the most senior people at the agency. And if you are, you're not getting a cross-section of senior talent, because of the way they're structured. Whereas we have seniority and variety across the board.  

So what decision or experience proved to be the most helpful to your career, and this could also include a failure that set you up for success later. 

It's kind of a crazy one, I think it was going after Lion's Den, now a long-time client of ours. They are an adult toy retailer in the United States.  

It wasn’t easy for me to say we're going do sex toys and it's going be great. I was afraid other clients wouldn't be interested in us if we had that kind of client. Turns out it was totally the opposite. Year after year, it’s some of the best work we've done. So that was a tough decision to make but it has helped put Fancy on the map. And it's fun.  

KB: As a new Agency was the idea of breaking taboos and asking people to look again or rethink something that they thought they had a fixed opinion on also helpful to establishing your own brand?  

Yes. Because it helped us embrace other taboos and to realize that there are these things that are normal parts of everyday life and if we don't talk about them, who's going to do it? It’s not just sexual things, aging is a taboo especially in advertising and in the work place - it's just not okay to age. Mental health is another one. And basically all of women's health. Anything below the belt - we've worked on incontinence, menopause and periods. All taboos. But all normal parts of life, too. 

I feel like finance is another taboo for women. Women don’t talk about money issues. I believe that women aren't going to be able to have equality until we have financial equality. And I don't think we're going to achieve that until we can talk about money within our own circles.  

So what advice would you give your 20 year old self? Knowing what you know now?  

I would tell her to spend a little bit more time building her own community and her own world. I moved around a lot, as creatives do in advertising. And I met lots of people and I had friends but I was never strategic about my network. That sounds kind of gross and I don’t mean in an insincere or calculating way. I just wish I had tried to grow my network a little bit more, because it would have been helpful when I first started Fancy and needed advice and support.  

I'm also an introvert so it's not always easy for me. And it certainly wasn't easy for me when I was 25. I should have fought for more client contact and more experience in the room with clients.   

Twenty years ago, it was very hierarchical in these big agencies and within the creative community. The account team held tight to the client, so we would be invited in to give our presentation and leave. There wasn't the chance to really understand the client’s goals and their business challenges and all of that stuff would have been helpful as I grew as a creative and as a business person, and definitely when I first started the agency. 

Where or from whom do you look for inspiration?  

As a creative, I find inspiration pretty much everywhere. Taking out the last year, travel is always good. Just sitting around and watching people. My craft, the craft of advertising is about human connection, about making connections with people so understanding the human condition is how I get real inspiration. 

And when you're feeling stuck, or uninspired, what actions do you take? Or questions do you ask? 

If I'm really stuck, I just have to get out. I'll go take a walk. I won't watch TV or a movie because that doesn't give your brain time to percolate. But I will go take a walk or I'll go do some errands. I live in New York City so my errands are walks. It's the thing that happens when you're not doing the thing but part of your brain is still working on it.  

In the last five years, what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your working life? Or you could say, or your approach to creating your 50 work life? 

It's the belief that I / we at Fancy can do it. That it is possible, that success is actually there. And, we just have to do the work to realize it, to make it real. It's having a positive mindset that has most improved my life.

KB: Was there a moment or was it a process over time?  

It's over time. It wasn't like one thing happened. It’s a belief that we can do it. It's also a belief that other people want us to succeed.  

There’s a rising community of women that want to see each other succeed. It's a different point of view than it was a couple decades ago, where women were on their own and had to crawl to the top to take that one seat and by hook or by crook hold on it because there weren’t any others.   

There’s been a shift in the way other women and their companies want to make the world better for everyone. I've realized that they also believe the same thing about me and my company.  

If you could put one quote or piece of advice and a big billboard for everyone over 50 to see what would it be? 

Do it anyway.  

Recommendation do you have for anyone thinking about starting their own business? 

There's a woman who Erica and I worked with a little bit called Julia Pimsleur. She has a book called Million Dollar Women. Her mission is getting a million women to a million dollars in revenue. Her ideas apply to anybody who's starting their own business.  

She's also very outspoken in the world of women, and especially in terms of fundraising, because so little funding, especially in terms of venture capital is going to women owned companies.  

So her book is a good place to start. She's got a Mindset book out now and a podcast.  

In a very practical sense, the book, Profit First was really helpful for us as two creative directors who started an agency with exactly zero training in business. Reading this book relieved an incredible amount of financial stress. It's very practical and very helpful. 

Recommended Reading

Read Katie’s article in AdWeek Brands Continue to Overlook Women Over 40 as a Group Worth Marketing To 

---

Featured: Women in Media