IPG Agencies Reveal Documentary Film About Advertising Icon Ilon Specht

In 1971, 23-year-old Ilon Specht was a copywriter at McCann-Erickson, and one of still relatively few women on Madison Avenue. Surrounded by a cadre of male colleagues on the L’Oréal account, Specht defied the status quo when she wrote something different—iconic slogan “Because I’m worth it.”

It’s been more than 50 years, and L’Oréal is still using “Because I’m worth it,” sometimes repositioned as “Because we’re worth it” or “Because you’re worth it.” McCann claims that it is the longest-running ad copy in history.

Specht died in April. But earlier this year, she collaborated with IPG’s Traverse32 and two-time Academy Award-winner Ben Proudfoot on a documentary film about her life and career. Aptly titled The Final Copy of Ilon Specht, the film premiered June 10 during a Tribeca X event at New York’s Convene One Liberty Plaza. Marketers and filmmakers attended, including Jane Fonda and Aja Naomi King, who represent Specht’s famed tagline in their roles as L’Oréal Paris brand ambassadors.

McCann Worldgroup representatives describe the film as a “deathbed account” of Specht’s work in advertising and her contribution to the feminist movement. As Specht battles cancer during the final months of her life and tells the story of her career, her recollections and family anecdotes capture what it was like to be a woman in advertising half a century ago.

Proudfoot’s collaboration with IPG is another example of how brands and agencies are teaming up with renowned directors to produce stories that resonate with people. Traverse32, IPG Mediabrands’ production studio, backs brand-funded films like the United States Postal Service’s Dear Santa and HIV/AIDS documentary 5B. In celebrating Specht, Traverse32 sister company McCann looks earnestly at its own thorny beginnings and at a woman within its ranks who challenged advertising’s sexist ideals.

“[It’s] kind of remarkable, the timing of how it all is coming together in this world of both celebrating her life and grieving her untimely loss. But it was a heist that we were in cahoots on to get the story told, which we took as a great responsibility to make sure we did it well,” Proudfoot said during a panel after the film premiere.

Specht’s true story

Proudfoot is well known to those who work at the intersection of marketing and film, and he is the only documentary filmmaker to win two Oscars. He’s not affiliated with any particular holding company, and his previous films include several produced with Publicis Sapient.

“If you’re going to fund a documentary or you’re going to support a documentary—trust the documentarian, right? Let them go out and make a film. And then on the filmmaker side, you have to obviously tell the truth, no matter what it is that you find,” Proudfoot told ADWEEK.

Having known Proudfoot for years, Brendan Gaul, IPG Mediabrands’ global chief content officer and Traverse32’s global president, was waiting for the right opportunity to partner together for the first time.

Proudfoot directed and produced The Final Copy of Ilon Specht alongside his Breakwater Studios partners, Kirstin Falk and Rachel Greenwald.

“I called Ilon, and she immediately said, ‘Absolutely no way. I’m not interested,’ and told me a litany of things that she didn’t like about or that she had a negative experience in the 1980s with [at] McCann-Erickson or L’Oréal. But she kept talking to me,” Proudfoot told the panel audience.

Eventually, Specht decided that she could tell her unabridged story, in her own words.

With Specht on board but unable to leave her apartment in New York’s historic Dakota building, Proudfoot filmed from her home.

McCann takes accountability

Leaning into the film’s honest depiction of advertising in the 1970s is consistent with McCann’s brand and its own tagline, “Truth Well Told,” according to Gaul. “I will tell the truth, which is that Ilon was quite mad at McCann,” said Daryl Lee, McCann Worldgroup global CEO, during the panel.

Traverse32 named three IPG leaders as executive producers of the film: Lee; Charlotte Franceries, McCann Paris’ president and global L’Oréal account lead; and Julien Calot, McCann Paris’ chief creative officer.

Getting approval to make the film required “a very short meeting,” Gaul said. “[L’Oréal Paris brand leader Delphine Viguier-Hovasse] walked to the front door of the office and shook my hand and said, ‘We have a deal, and we’ll figure out how to get it done.’”

Traverse32 is handling the film’s distribution strategy in the U.S. and internationally. Gaul is not “particularly interested in an exclusive distributor,” he told ADWEEK.

We’re looking at multiple editorial streaming and broadcast partners to get it out to as wide an audience as possible.

Brendan Gaul, IPG Mediabrands’ global chief content officer and Traverse32’s global president

‘Because I’m worth it’

Even after Specht wrote the copy and got it approved, McCann-Erickson shot two versions of the ad. One was Specht’s version, and another was a version her male colleagues wrote. In Specht’s version, a woman walks alone and addresses the camera confidently. In another, she walks with a man who does all the talking.

When the agency tested it with audiences, Specht’s ad far outperformed the other version. Since then, it’s become synonymous with L’Oréal Paris and become a widely known feminist slogan.

“I am an ambassador for L’Oréal. And so I get asked all the time, what does saying, ‘Because I’m worth it,’ mean to you?” Fonda said during the panel. “It’s agency. It expresses a woman’s agency.”

Naomi King still remembers the first time she said the tagline during a shoot at L’Oréal’s offices. In that moment, she remembered watching her mother put makeup on in the morning.

“You know, a Black woman working in an industry where there were very few other women that looked like her, if women at all, and tons of men … Having that moment to herself in the morning to go out into the world—it was like putting on armor,” said Naomi King. “Being in that dark studio in New York and just saying those words, ‘I’m worth it,’ took me back to that moment of watching her.”