It’s Time to Name the Work for What It Really Is

It starts innocently enough.

“She’s our ads girl.”

It sounds harmless. Just a bit of shorthand in a team meeting.

But underneath? A quiet signal about where strategy ends and where “support” begins.

I’ve been in this space a long time, long enough to recognize the pattern. It’s not just in the language. It’s in how women’s strategic thinking gets absorbed, downplayed or re-routed.

We’re often brought in to 'run ads', then quietly expected to fix what isn’t working: Funnel holes. Offer clarity. Audiences that don't fit. Messaging drift. Revenue leaks.

And often, we do. Because we see what others miss.

This Isn’t Just About Credit

It’s about how the work is framed.

When women in ads are treated like helpers instead of the strategic leads they already are, we miss the thinking that holds the whole thing together. We miss the insight and judgment that make results possible.

Because many of us aren’t just optimizing campaigns. We’re aligning visibility with buying signals, adjusting ad spend based on real audience behavior, designing flows to build trust, not just funnel traffic.

This isn’t bonus material. It’s the foundation.

The Phrase “Ads Girl” Isn’t the Problem

It’s a signal. It reflects a deeper discomfort with women holding strategic authority, especially in roles that require intuition, tech fluency, and cross-functional thinking.

And when we don’t speak up about this, we end up doing high-level work that gets mislabeled and under-valued.

That silence costs more than visibility. It costs clarity. And when clarity goes, alignment goes with it.

What Naming Makes Possible

Naming doesn’t mean branding louder. It means talking about what’s actually already happening.

For me, and the women I work with, it means naming the strategic view we’re bringing to our work.  Structuring our services so that insight isn’t optional, it’s central. And working with clients who know that clear thinking is worth more than fast output.

It’s not rebranding ourselves. It’s returning to what’s always been true.

If You’ve Been Holding the Whole Thing Quietly

If you’ve been brought in to implement, only to end up reshaping the strategy…

If you’ve done the work while someone else took the credit…

If you’ve been keeping the system together without being seen as the one who designed it in the first place…

You’re not imagining it. And you’re not alone.

Let’s stop shrinking the work to fit the title. 

Let’s name it for what it really is and build from there.