Should Our Ads Represent Us?

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Newsletter #3 | How to deliver greater representation for your brands. Discover insights from the world’s leading gender in media institute.

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Last month, we’re proud to announce CreativeX has partnered with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media or GDIGM to provide a “turnkey solution to help major brand advertisers measure on screen representation and diversity in their global ads.” writes Madeline Di Nonno, President and CEO at GDIGM.

In their fight for greater representation and inclusivity in media, GDIGM have worked with Google, Facebook, Cannes Lions, and many more. Using data driven research, education, and advocacy to prevent unconscious bias that leads to stereotypes, GDIGM have so far managed to:

• Achieve parity for lead female characters in the top-100 grossing family films
• Amass the largest body of research on gender prevalence in entertainment
• Drive more aspirational and inclusive female characters across entertainment
  

To celebrate our partnership, we analyzed 3,511 ads from some of the world’s best known CPG, beauty, and alcohol brands. Using our creative measurement technology we analyzed the frequency of visual, audio, and contextual cues, including sex, activity, appearance, and more. We found:

• Male characters featured more frequently in professional environments: Although 55% of ads featured female characters (the average for CPG ads), male characters were 1.5X more likely to be shown in professional settings than female characters.
• Characters with light to medium skin tones featured twice as often in professional environments: Characters with darker skin tones featured half as frequently in professional settings as characters with lighter skin tones (18% compared to 8%).
• Characters (over 60s) hardly featured: Despite people who are 60+ controlling up to 70% of America’s disposable income, just 1% of ads featured people over 60, and less than 2% were featured in physical settings. 
  

Benefits of the Partnership

CreativeX clients who use our Representation tool will have access to GDIGM’s unrivalled knowledge and experience in fighting unconscious bias in media. Users of the Representation tool will not only gain a far deeper understanding into how people are shown across their creatives worldwide.

There is a growing recognition that it’s not enough for companies to sell products. The new rules of the corporate world increasingly demand that companies sell a set of values. Can the advertising industry grasp the opportunity to lead a responsibility revolution?

State of Representation

According to the latest The Black Pound Report, UK brands are failing to produce relevant or meaningful ads for Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic consumers. They risk missing out on more than £300 billion. To know what is meaningful, you must first listen. To source authentic and diverse insights, GSK-owned brand Centrum has been tracking mindset shifts in diverse communities during COVID-19. Does more authentic content make people feel seen, though?

Feeling Seen, a 2021 report from effectiveness agency System1 shows brands can reap a diversity dividend with more representative ads. By measuring how different groups of people react to the ads which spotlight them, the report concludes, 

“When you increase diversity in your ads, and give more customers the opportunity to feel seen by making the ads reflect their true, everyday lives, those ads are just as effective among the general population but are even more effective in the diverse groups you include.”

Representation and being seen are not the same thing. New research from Swedish Association of Communication Agencies (KOMM) in partnership with Google and GDIGM, found that tropes and stereotypes persist. Despite progress in neutralising sexist stereotyping, ageism persists. As does the obsession with thin body ideals. Unconscious bias continues to be the enemy of inclusive content. How do you see what you can’t see?

Google’s inclusivity worksheet is another step in the right direction. It is a diagnostic tool designed for self-reflection - to overcome discomfort and mobilize the majority group for greater inclusivity. 

After almost 20 years of research, GDIGM found “data is the key to mitigating unconscious bias in the creation of entertainment media.” Given how much content marketers are now making, technology could be an essential tool in the battle against unconscious bias. Using CreativeX technology to tag - at scale - the visual attributes that represent people and stereotypes can give marketers a global understanding of how people are represented in their content:

• define and create objective guidelines to avoid gender stereotypes
• develop frameworks, like the one Diageo have been using, to eliminate unconscious bias in their creative content
• build a DEI agenda across your marketing teams and agencies
• show progress on your unstereotype journey, and 
• elevate your marketing to be truly representative of your consumer
  

As advertisers, we all have a responsibility to lift society up and forwards. Syl Saller, retired Diageo CMO said, “Through the millennia, culture has been shaped by the stories we tell and if you think about it, advertising is telling stories that are backed by billions of dollars to have them heard. I am convinced we can normalize gender equality with what we choose to show in our ads, and who we choose to make them.”
Or, as Geena Davis says, “If she can see it, she can be it.”

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→ Read more on Representation and Advertising:

• Gender in Advertising Report 2024
• Gender in Advertising Report 2023
  
  

→ See how the world's leading brands are using creative data to drive business impact:

• How Bayer Drove Effectiveness through the Creative Quality Score
• How Barilla Tapped into Creative Data to Transform their Marketing Measurement
• How Nestlé drove 66% ROAS on Meta