5 Minutes With… Cindy Gallop

Adobe XD is a proud supporter of LBB. As part of the sponsorship of the ‘5 Minutes with…’ channel, we spend time with some of the most innovative and creative minds in the industry.

Cindy’s incredible career in advertising began in 1985. Joining London’s Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1989 and setting up the US branch a decade later, she served as the president of the branch, leaving in 2005. 

In 2006, Cindy founded her own company that focuses on business innovation. A prolific speaker, mentor, and consultant, she caused a furore at the 2009 TED conference with the announcement of MakeLoveNotPorn’s imminent launch - a curated platform of real world sex videos aimed at countering the dominant narratives and aesthetic of mainstream pornography. 

Today, MakeLoveNotPorn has grown into a video sharing site aimed at further reducing stigma and shame around real bodies, sex, and feelings, alongside plans to create a sex educational resource for 0-18 year-olds. She’s also working on a messaging app that will make sexting completely private and secure. Finally, she’s set her sights on reinventing ad tech to show the industry that real innovation is necessary, possible, and will give rise to ads that people actually want to watch. 

LBB’s Zhenya Tsenzharyk spoke with Cindy about her views on the industry, making things with a ‘female lens’ and how she’s going to make ads that are considered to be premier viewing once more. 

LBB> As someone who helped shape the advertising and consumer landscape for so long, what kind of role do you think advertising plays in people’s lives today and what kind of responsibility, if any, do advertisers have to their audiences? 

Cindy> My immediate answer to that is that advertising does not play the role in consumers’ lives today that could be played. And that is for two reasons. Our industry does not understand that we are the business model for the internet. And the second reason is, our industry is spectacularly failing to do something I’ve exhausted pushing for for literally decades, and that is to reinvent aspirational culture. Our industry deals in stereotypes. We have perpetuated the stereotype of the heteronormative couple. What I want to do is to reinvent aspirational culture around the relationship role model of today, which is a partnership of equals. We can also reinvent aspirational culture around age. Our industry makes us think that everybody aspires to be young. They don't – young people aspire to be us. In the meantime what I'm doing with MakeLoveNotPorn is reinventing aspirational culture around sex. 

LBB> Your incredible career in advertising started in 1985 when there were few women in leadership roles. In an interview in 2016, you were still lamenting the lack of female creative leaders and the effect that was having on advertising. How do you feel about the subject in 2023 - have you seen progress? 

Cindy> Nothing's changing. I coach brilliant women who have no idea how brilliant they are, because their entire career they've been kept down by men. Women in our industry write to me all the time who continue to this day to be sexually harassed, misogynistically bullied, forced out of agencies, forced out of production companies, forced out of media agencies. We are nowhere near getting female leadership to run this industry the way it needs to be run to have the far better future it could have. 

LBB> #MeToo is still sending ripples through industries like entertainment. Do you think advertising has had its day of reckoning? 

Cindy> Not in the slightest. I've been speaking out about sexual harassment publicly for years and I spoke out about it publicly because nobody else would. I posted on Facebook in October 2017 and said, “Now's the time to come forward and expose the Harvey Weinstein's of our industry and their names. Here's my email. Email me and I will connect you with trusted journalists who can break these stories.” All hell broke loose in my inbox in a way I had not anticipated. 

I was due to give a keynote speech, and at the last moment, I completely rewrote my talk to make the first 15 minutes of it all about what had shown up in my inbox. Unfortunately, I could not get the stories broken. A year later, I stood on the stage of the conference and said, “A year ago, I told you that I was going to help bring the Harvey Weinstein's of our industry to justice. And I'm here to tell you today that I failed. I just want you to know, powerful men in our industry who think they’ve gotten away with it, you haven’t. Powerful women in our industry who have enabled it, you haven’t either.” There has been no reckoning. There has been a lot of talk, but no reckoning.

LBB> What are your thoughts on the term ‘girlboss’ – do you think it’s empowering, infantilising, both, neither? 

Cindy> It’s been so misused by the media that it’s meaningless. Yet movements like girlboss absolutely inspired a tonne of women to think differently about themselves and what they can do. Every woman needs her own trigger for understanding what she's capable of, and wanting to seize the opportunity of being denied to her. I don't knock that term for what it's done in that respect. But it's absolutely been massively misused by the media. 

LBB> You launched MakeLoveNotPorn - a curated platform that posts real-world sex videos - in 2009 when the world was much less sex-positive. What are its aims in 2023? 

Cindy> MakeLoveNotPorn’s mission ultimately is to end rape culture. We end rape culture by showing you how wonderful great consensual, communicative sex is in the real world. Our social sex videos role model good sexual values and good sexual behaviour. We make all of that aspirational, versus what you see in porn and popular culture. Our MakeLoveNotPorn members and contributors are male, female, trans, non binary, LGBTQ, straight, and all races and ethnicities. We're a global platform. But in the 10 years we have been operating, I especially observed that MakeLoveNotPorn is a revelation to men. We are something unique that men will find nowhere else on the internet; a safe space where they can be and watch other men be open, emotional and vulnerable around sex. 

Women enjoy sex just as much as men, and men are just as romantic as women, yet neither gender is allowed to openly celebrate either fact. We bring consumers enormous relief when we do what MakeLoveNotPorn is doing – socialise and normalise sex. Bring it out of the shadows into the sunlight. Consumers will be so grateful when we do that. And that's also the path to their wallets. 

LBB> You talked about the difficulty of getting funding for MLNP. Why was the road to get there so difficult? 

Cindy> I know my investors are out there. However, they are impossible to find by the usual means because they all have one thing in common; your willingness to fund MakeLoveNotPorn is entirely a function of your personal sexual journey. It is a function of your personal lens on sex and sexuality that's been shaped by your own experience. I have no way to research and target for that. My strategy to find investors has been to put what I'm doing out there all the time. This is ostensibly a long, slow, painful and highly inefficient process. But the good news is, it works. 

LBB> Where are you at with MLNP now - what’s next on the horizon? 

Cindy> I'm raising $17 million to scale the core business and to build out three product expansions that are designed to be very compelling businesses in their own right, but also, to be growth engines for the core business. One product is the 0 to 18 version and Make Love Not porn, which is a sex education expansion. The second is a messaging app designed to enable you to sext completely safely and securely. 

But the one I really want to share the details of is the plan to build ad-tech that serves ads that people actively want to watch, so much so that that ads will be destination viewing in themselves. I'm calling it ‘Here for the Ads’. As you know, MakeLoveNotPorn is banned from advertising on platforms like TikTok, Google, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and so forth because it falls under the explicit content category. 

I love the advertising industry and that’s why I want it to be different. So for years, I've been talking about and encouraging other women to start tech ventures through the female lens because ad tech is so white male dominated. Because I like to live my own philosophies, I decided to build my own solution. When I was growing up in the ‘80s, I remember going to the cinema with friends and getting there early to catch the ads - they were as much of the entertainment as the film itself. At the moment, I’m raising funds to build a pilot to serve as proof of concept. The ad tech I'm designing is the complete opposite of the existing model. I want to build ad tech that serves ads that people actively want to watch. So much so that that ad tag will be destination viewing in itself. It’s going to operate under the ‘sale, not scale’ mantra because I’m designing it to make a huge amount of money and sell a tonne of products and services for brands.

LBB> How will ‘Here For The Ads’ achieve these objections?

Cindy> Reason number one is, when built, I’m going to open up this ad tech to every service and product, like Make Love Not Porn, that’s currently banned from advertising. That’s a very broad swathe of any female sexual health and wellness ventures including sex education ventures. We’re not just talking about small businesses here; all the big players can’t advertise their lube and condoms the way they want to either. This is going to be a huge revenue generator as it’s going to serve ads designed to help people solve their most intimate problems which they’re desperate for help with. 

The second reason people will want to watch these ads is because on our ad tech, you’ll be able to advertise any way you like, no censorship, no holds barred. Have fun with it! We’re talking every brands’ and creative agencies’ dream brief - be fun, be engaging, be creative, be compelling, be entertaining, with no censorship whatsoever. This is why our ad tech will have a share button; these will be the ads that people will want to forward to everyone they know. Virality will be an in-built feature, nothing happens by chance. 

The third reason people will want to watch the ads is because at the heart of everything we do lies human curation, like with Make Love Not Porn. On ‘Here For The Ads’, you will have to apply to run your ads on our platform and our curators will decide if we will endorse your product - you have to be legitimate - and whether your advertising is of sufficient quality to be served on a platform for ads that people actively want to watch. And the reason I first want to do this across my own platforms is for proof of concept. Currently, platforms like TikTok, Google, and so forth ban a lot of ads because they have an abstract concept of Sodom and Gomorrah unleashing. I want to show them an ad channel where the opposite happens - all the brands are legit and the ads are fantastic because they’re creative, funny, engaging, and people are loving them.