So, dear old M&C Saatchi (an agency I have been known to freelance at, back in the day) has celebrated its 21st birthday with a cake. Nothing exceptional about this, except the ingredients of this cake included a female stripper with, apparently, a Louis Vuitton bag on her head. How very Hugh Hefner of M&C (how cutting edge is that guy in 2016?). How very 1962.

No doubt M&C would claim that they were doing female strippers in an ironic, hipster kind of a way and perhaps they were. Trouble is, they invited the trade press and it seems they missed the joke. Which is a problem, not just for M&C but for the whole advertising industry.

Perhaps things have changed since I worked in Adland (although by the look of the cake, perhaps not), but I always thought advertising's remit was to manage all the interactions and communications between brands and consumers. You would think that this requires ad agencies to have their fingers on the pulse of what is happening to those consumers and how they see the world.

The majority of purchases are still made by women. The figure of 80 per cent used to be bandied about when I was working in agencies. Yet Adland seems to have entirely missed what has happened to women over the last four decades. Either that, or they are still impatiently waiting for the whole feminist revolution to just go away. This is hardly surprising considering how few women there are in senior positions in advertising to enlighten them.

There are even fewer women in the all-important creative department (that's an ironic name if ever there was one) where the ads themselves get written. This actually worked to my advantage a few years ago. I got a semi-regular gig on The Gruen Transfer because the producers were so desperate to find women working in the business.

Generally the Gruen panel was (and is) one woman to three blokes and Wil Anderson (also a bloke). I vividly remember being in the first episode that had a whole two of us vagina-owners on the panel. "We're doing this for you, Jane" said the producers proudly (or was it ironically?). You may also have noticed how very rare it is to have a woman front the 'The Pitch' segment of the show - bit of a clue there, too.

Only a few months ago there was another public kerfuffle over the gaping hole where women should be when Leo Burnett proudly announced five (virtually identical) new blokes appointed to senior roles in their (ahem) creative department. Such was the agencies complete lack of self-awareness they were gob smacked at the outcry that followed.

It appears they not only hadn't noticed the lack of women in their PR release, they hadn't noticed how uppity women have become about that sort of thing or that they can now express their irritation loudly thanks to social media. Add that to the vicious (but accurate) portrayal of advertising's attitude to women in Mad Men, and, if I may venture some feedback to the image-makers, it seems, gentlemen, you have an image problem.

And, for me, this is the crucial point. Ad agencies are meant to be the communicators, the experts in image making yet, at every turn, for decades, they have revealed their total lack of ability to manage their own.

And this is where their clients come in. They not only have more women in decision-making positions but most of the CEOs of Australia's major advertisers can be counted amongst (ex-Sex Discrimination Commissioner) Liz Broderick's male champions of change.

Frankly, it's time advertisers helped the ad industry help itself. Those who control major communication budgets just need to insist that equal numbers of female creatives work on their account as a condition of awarding the business. Within six months the ad business will have moved from 1962 to 2016. Not just in raw numbers of women employed either, but in understanding the modern world, the modern consumer and how to communicate skilfully, wittily and appropriately to them.

I know M&C are only 21 but surely it is about time the ad game grew up?