The long road to fixing advertising’s sexism problem

The fight against the “sex sells” attitude in advertising continues, with a number of brands striving to present women in more empowered roles. But changing Canadian attitudes is a long, slow process, and the battle won’t be won anytime soon.

As Advertising Standards Canada [ASC] met for its annual general meeting on May 5, this was but one of the insights discussed by a panel of industry experts during the “Are Mad Men Mad at Women?” discussion held Thursday morning.

Moderated by The Globe and Mail‘s Susan Krashinsky and jointly curated by the ASC’s outgoing president Linda Nagel and The Township’s founder Karen Howe, the group met to discuss consumer perceptions of an industry that, for years, has relied on naked and/or subservient women to sell everything from vodka to hamburgers.

If that statement seems extreme, it is. But, the video that kicked off the discussion (created by New York agency Badger & Winters) shows it’s also true.

The Tom Ford fashion brand that appeared twice in that video was immediately criticized by Howe. “That was shocking,” she said. “How did it get through? With the research we all go through and the layers of approval we all face when we’re trying to produce something, I find myself asking how that got through.”

“I think the strategy is to create talk value, to shock, to offend,” said fellow panelist Randy Stein, a founding partner at Toronto agency Grip Limited. “It’s a calculated risk. It’s a very unfortunate and misguided one. It’s a lazy way to get eyeballs.”

The panel did concede, however, that things are improving as more marketers see value in presenting themselves as having a modern, more nuanced outlook on consumers. Panelist Natalie Wallace, General Mills’ associate marketing manager, spoke to the effectiveness of campaigns such as Cheerio’s “#HowToDad,” which featured fathers as the primary parental characters — a box in which mothers have long been locked.

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“I think what General Mills is trying to say is that we need to mirror what Canadian families are like today, and those things are changing,” Wallace said. So instead of making mom serve the kids breakfast while a father watches on, “we put dad in the forefront of caregiving. More companies are doing that – looking at stereotypes and breaking those down.”

When asked how that marketing message translated into business results, Wallace said the campaign was “definitely” worth the effort from a sales standpoint. While she didn’t share sales figures, “from a product launch perspective, “#HowToDad” was incredibly successful. From a sales perspective, [it was] amazing. But also, in terms of people loving the brand, the outreach to consumers was very positive as well. From a brand loyalty perspective, it was amazing.”

Who will take up the fight?

However, each panelist had seen their share of sexist behaviour in the industry, despite these strides.

“I had the head of a large international organization tell me last year that I couldn’t use a women for a voiceover because women lack credibility,” Howe told the ASC attendees.

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Moreover, research conducted by The Gandalf Group on behalf of the ASC showed that there may not be sufficient will among key consumer groups to continue shifting the public discourse on women’s roles in advertising. Panelist Jennifer Espey, principal partner at Gandalf, said her company’s polling showed only 12% of women and 5% of men feel “angry or outraged” when they see sexist ads. A near equal number of women (11%) and 20% of men said they felt resigned.

And while 67% of those polled said they were less likely to buy a product from a company with sexist ads, Espey said she wouldn’t “take that to the bank.” That stat includes two groups – the 38% who said they were “much less likely” and 29% who were merely “somewhat less likely” to buy. “We see a lot of research, and the ‘somewhat less likely’ often don’t do what they’re only somewhat likely to do.”

Espey also said older women tend to be the only demographic group that show an ability to take action against sexist ads by not buying those products; men generally tend not to notice sexism in advertising as often as women, and younger women said they were less inclined to avoid products with sexist ads.

“Women were raised in a sexist culture as well. What’s really needed is for everyone to expand how they see things… I don’t see in the data that this is going to be cured by millennials,” Wallace said.

The panel did agree, however, that small steps can begin to fix this problem. While hiring women into more senior marketing and executive roles will help, panelists said the consumer base would be more moved by seeing ads that don’t pander, but do show different portrayals of men and women.

Espey said that could be as simple as putting women in the driver’s seat in automotive ads, or casting women to do yard work while men prepare food.

“When I look towards the future, I hope that my kids will grow up in a world where they can watch an ad where you could switch male and female roles and it would make no difference to the plot line and no one would even notice,” added General Mills’ Wallace. “I don’t think we’re even close to being there yet… In the short term, we have to be so conscious of it. When our partners at our agencies come to us with a script that has a male in the front seat driving, it’s up to us and the creatives to ask questions. In the short term, before we get to that long-term goal, it’s about us being very vigilant, asking all those questions.”