Advertising / Marketing Archives | Page 24 of 49

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a departure from overtly sexist and misogynistic advertising.

The #MeToo movement and the rise of “fempowerment” are just some factors that have caused advertisers to look at their campaigns and adapt their content in order to show women in a more powerful and positive light.

Today, far too many brands are using outdated, harmful, and offensive female representations in their advertising. And yes, while we need to acknowledge that misogynistic marketing has improved, forms of sexism still exist in the marketing world.

And there’s a new term for this form of subtle sexist advertising – sneaky sexism.

What Is Sneaky Sexism?

Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts – former members of the leadership teams at Ogilvy and DDB, London, and now founders of PrettyLittleHead (PLH) – coined the term.

In their book ‘Brandsplaining: Why Marketing is (Still) Sexist and How to Fix It’, they explain that sneaky sexism is a form of “brandsplaining”.

For those unfamiliar with this term, brandsplaining occurs when brands believe they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to the relationship between themselves and their customers.

Essentially, it’s when brands feel they are in control of their customers’ needs and desires.

When it comes to sneaky sexism, Cunningham and Roberts define it as a type of sexism that is subtly added to advertising in a way that avoids offense and backlash from their audience.

Examples of Sneaky Sexism in Advertising

As the name suggests, sneaky sexism is more covert. For example, think back to when diet pills were first introduced.

You may think that these pills have been discontinued or fallen out of fashion due to the fact it pushed unhealthy ideals that women need to lose weight to be considered attractive. But these pills are still out there, but they’re now advertised as “wellness” products.

Another key example to keep an eye on is the way brands phrase the “fix it” narrative.

Back in the early 1930s, brands would suggest women need to change their physical appearance to adhere to society’s version of beauty. Today that narrative has changed, and women are now being instructed to change their characteristics.

Women are now told to be bold, confident, and love who they are. And while this may be a step in the right direction, this narrative still has negative connotations for women.

We are still telling women what they need to be like in order to be accepted by society. And if women don’t fit certain then they are still viewed as failures.

Has Sexist Advertising Evolved?

Until the 21st century, most advertising targeting women was created through what is known as the male gaze. In essence, women were mainly sexualised and/or portrayed as inferior to men.

In many cases, female advertising was created using the perfectionist narrative. At its core, this narrative would suggest that women are not good enough and need to improve their looks or how they run their household and look after their families.

The perfectionist narrative stuck around throughout the 20th century, but the idea of the perfect woman changed with the times and turned into the “good girl” phenomenon.

But what attributes does the “good girl” possess? Well, she would need to be subservient, skinny, pretty, and white, and women who featured in ads back in the 20th century would predominantly fit this mould.

You may think that we have moved past forcing this ideal onto women… but we haven’t. Today, 25% of ads that feature women are still sexualized, and 85% of these women adhere to the good girl phenomenon.

Why Are We Talking About This Now?

Sexist advertising, in particular, can be incredibly impressionable and promotes harmful and misogynistic ideals for global audiences.

To prove the damaging impact of sexist advertising, Cunningham and Roberts spent 15 years researching and surveying 14,000 women in 14 countries across four continents to understand their thoughts on women in advertising.

In Conclusion

While we may have left the worst of overtly sexist marketing in the past, sexism still exists, and we need to do something about it.

As consumers become far more aware of overtly unethical and discriminatory practices in advertising and marketing, poor behaviour is quickly retreating to the verges, where it often continues to thrive. Just look at the persistence of “Rainbow-Washing” around Pride Month.

We need to create ads that women want, and ads that truly represent who they are on the inside. Now is the time to ditch this outdated depiction of women once and for all.

GYDA is thrilled to announce its repositioning as a Mastermind-centred business. The relaunch which happened in June 2022, sees GYDA increase its focus from being a business consultancy who helped agency leaders through traditional consultancy methods, to one that focuses on peer-to-peer Mastermind groups for agencies leaders all over the world.

The relaunch was the culmination of a six month project initiated by the managing partners Robert Craven and Janusz Stabik.

‘Our experience of running Mastermind programs spans back over seven years and includes the renowned Google Elevator program. It made sense to pivot the business to focus on the tools that work for agency leaders. We continue to support our clients with additional 1-2-1 coaching and growth centered consulting.’

The project included an in-depth strategy phase where GYDA collaborated with their growth experts and agency clients. Followed by a rebrand project with TinyBrand.

‘We were so excited to work with Jemma at Tiny Brand again. Helping us to solidify and refine our brand strategy, they went on to create a new visual identity and collateral for GYDA. We are over the moon with the results. Our beautiful new brand fits perfectly with our audience and confirms GYDA’s position as market leader for mastermind programs.’

This month’s Women in Business episode features an interview with Sue Turner OBE, founder of AI Governance Ltd, and one of the first people to be certified as an Artificial Intelligence auditor by the For Humanity organisation. Sue sits down with Sophie Harris, Head of Marketing and New Business to discuss the power of AI for businesses and how to utilise Artificial Intelligence ethically.

Women in Business Artificial Intelligence special – Episode 12: Sue Turner, AI Governance Ltd. video here.

AI is becoming pervasive across all levels of business activity, from HR to enterprise planning and decision making. And it’s widely accepted that most company boards are ill-equipped to understand the implications it has for their business, let alone create a governance framework for its use. Sue is at the forefront of raising AI ethical awareness and helping boards to navigate the governance minefield.

As marketing professionals, we’re trained to attract and convert customers with the right message, at the right time, in the right place. We analyse, we strategise, we plan, we create and we optimise to achieve commercial growth.

AI does this at scale – analysing, optimising and making autonomous decisions at speed. Autonomy is the key word here. AI learns as it goes, analysing huge datasets, testing multiple creative variants across a vast network of interconnected digital profiles. Its prime objective is acquiring and retaining the right customers as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible – across the entire customer journey. It does whatever is needed to meet the objective it’s programmed to fulfil, and it does so in real time.

The results can be impressive. Here are just a few examples. But bear in mind that these case studies have been written to promote the use of AI. In reality, we believe there’s still a considerable amount of human intervention and management involved, as brands are understandably cautious and AI is still finding its feet.

Vanguard Institutional, one of the world’s largest investment companies, used the Persado AI language platform across their LinkedIn marketing activity. The platform identified the phrases that resonated with customers and delivered messages with the right formatting, tone and call to action to increase conversion rates by 15%.

The American Marketing Association used the rasa.io natural language AI system to automate the curation, placement and subject lines of articles, to create personalised newsletters for their 100,000 subscribers. This drove a significant increase in traffic to their website, and an engagement rate for their newsletter of 42%.

Adobe generated an extra $10 million in revenue by using the Drift AI chatbot to guide website visitors through their content and hand off conversations to a human in a call centre.

Dutch online retailer Wehkamp, used the natural language AI of Wordsmith to convert the structured datasets of their 400,000 product lines into search engine optimised product descriptions in their own brand tone of voice. This enabled the company’s copywriters and editors to shift their focus to creating advertising and content to attract new customers.

So, with the promise of results like these, why isn’t every business jumping on board?

The answer is simply human nature. Business people are cautious. We like certainty. We like data to support our own decision making. With AI, we don’t know for sure what will happen until we try it, and we’re devolving the decision making to the machine.

We may dip our toes into one part of the process. Programmatic display advertising, for example, or predictive big-data analytics. But applying AI across the whole marketing process seems a way off.

It’s the same caution that drives our relationship with autonomous cars (pun intended). We’re relatively comfortable with automated cruise and lane control yet giving complete control of the car still seems scary – even though we know that pilots regularly do this on the planes that carry us through the skies.

So are we right to be cautious? In short, yes. Hence the need for AI governance to address the concerns around, for instance, bias and privacy.

AI governance audits are encouraging the disclosure of differences in the data a system has been trained with and the data it finds when it’s working. A diverse universe of training data is advised to eradicate bias in practice across all dimensions: gender, race, politics, location etc.

On the face of it this sounds like common sense. But the case of OpenAI’s natural language processor GPT-3 exposes the flaw in this thinking.

Backed by funders including Elon Musk and Microsoft, the GPT-3 API is already used by companies like IBM, Cisco and Intel, and the engine is embedded into solutions like Pencil who already have over 100 customers including Unilever.

Backed by tech giants and increasingly used by large global brands, GPT-3’s learning dataset has been the whole of the internet. It’s powerful. And yet there are already a growing number of ethical concerns about it.

Despite its power and huge internet-wide learning dataset, tests have shown it still fails some simple common-sense reasoning tests. It also has a problem of bias. A recent research paper from Stanford found that in 60% of cases GTP-3 described Muslims as violent, and wrote about Black people in a negative way.

These problems don’t seem to be isolated to GPT-3 either. A research paper from the Allen Institute for AI found that they applied to nearly every popular AI language model, including Facebook’s RoBERTa software.

Clearly, there are many bigger brains working on these ethical problems than mine. But it has led me to ponder some very real ethical dilemmas for us as marketers.

On the one hand, we’re deploying fast-learning machines with the objective to grow our businesses. They do this by testing and learning from the behavioural data they encounter. They’re pragmatic. They’re not programmed to change the world, but to exploit what it finds to be true.

On the other hand, we’re driven by the objective of our western sensibilities to change attitudes and behaviours by portraying our brands as inclusive and accepting of diversity.

The dilemma for our governance of AI machines in the service of global brands is how to direct them when these two objectives come into conflict.

Do we instruct them to show diverse imagery and use inclusive language in regions, cultures or segments of our communities where they don’t resonate with the audience or deliver commercial results? Or do we let them pragmatically deliver an ever-evolving hyper-personalised version of the brand with a core purpose, tailored to the sensibilities of whoever it encounters?

I don’t have the answer to these questions. But it’s important our industry and the practice of AI governance addresses them now, in these early stages of evolution. Even now, we can see AI engines being embedded and replicated in other systems, and applications being swiftly adopted.

The danger is that any bias or ethical conflicts programmed into the DNA of these early engines may be hard to stamp out as they replicate and grow into interconnected ecosystems.

If we think things are moving quickly now, this is nothing to where the experts predict it will go next. Imagine an AI system designed by another AI system with the objective of being better than itself. Science fiction? It’s already happening. The DeepMind project has developed AlphaGo, an AI-powered machine, to play the game ‘Go’ – thought to be one of the most challenging board games in the world. Not satisfied with beating the world’s top players, they used AI to create a version that beat itself.

In the past 3 years, eCommerce businesses have experienced the impact of a number of global crises.

Right now, we’re still living through the aftermath of a global pandemic, rising inflation, and the war in Ukraine. And these global events have shaken even the most successful eCommerce brands.

Over the past 6 months, retail brands have started losing some confidence in marketing spend amid worries of a bleak future. However, knee-jerk reactions can do more damage than you think.

There are opportunities for those brands willing to invest. And to help you through these turbulent times, we have released a new guide – Global Issues: The Threats Affecting eCommerce.

You can download it free here. Or scroll down to find out more about everything included in the guide before you make up your mind.

What’s the Guide, ‘Global Issues: The Threats Affecting eCommerce’, All About?

In our latest guide, we take a closer look at the global crises impacting eCommerce brands, how brands can react and excel in these uncertain times, as well as the top 5 trends defining the eCommerce landscape in 2022.

The Threats Affecting eCommerce

Digital advertising revenue reached $189 billion in 2021, jumping 35% – the highest increase since 2006.

But as we’re sure you’re aware, the picture is not rosy for many retail brands. Inflation, war, pandemics, and supply chain shortages have all created a difficult terrain for brands to flourish.

What Can eCommerce Brands Do?

Consumers have responded to these crises by cutting back on their spending. The less people are willing to spend, the less people will be actively clicking on your ads.

eCommerce Performance Look Book AW ’22

The future eCommerce landscape looks tough. But there are still opportunities out there if you focus on the marketing trends that are emerging. It’s these trends that will help you succeed in 2022 and beyond.

The founders of The Big Plastic Count – Greenpeace UK and Everyday Plastic – appointed purpose-driven creative agency, Enviral, to create its latest national campaign, which has lifted the lid on the country’s recycling rates and exposed that the government is talking trash about our plastic problem.

Through their launch video, The Big Plastic Count and Enviral encouraged 31 MPs and 97,948 households to take part in counting their plastic for a week in May, which equates to 1 in every 262 households in the UK. This was the biggest ever investigation into UK household plastics and the data uncovered will be crucial in convincing the government, big brands and supermarkets to take ambitious action on reducing plastic packaging.

Throughout the investigation, participants counted over 96 billion pieces of plastic and uncovered that only 12% of our plastic waste is actually recycled with 17% exported abroad, 25% sent to landfill and 46% incinerated.

Working in close partnership with the The Big Plastic Count team, Enviral developed the creative, the narrative and oversaw the shoot productions to create three hard-hitting films; a launch film, a how-to film and a shocking results film which puts pressure on the government to act.

Chris Thorne, Plastics Campaigner at Greenpeace UK said: “The plastic crisis is out of control but if the government acts we can get a grip on the problem. That’s why The Big Plastic Count is so important. Getting the narrative right on a campaign like this can be make or break. Through Envirals understanding of our needs and their collaborative approach they’ve helped us create assets we know the public will connect with and will lead to more and more people pushing the government to take ambitious action to end the plastic waste problem.

Joss Ford, Enviral Founder, comments: “We’ve been consistently beating the drum around the role of creatives in fighting the climate crisis and in connecting hearts and minds. So being able to partner with such an impactful organisation like Greenpeace UK really is a huge moment for our team and one which we hope brings real impact and holds those in power to account.”

This project embodies Greenpeace UK’s wider mission to defend the natural world from destruction, with a vision for a greener, healthier and more peaceful planet that can sustain life for future generations to come. The campaign evolved out of The Everyday Plastic Survey, pioneered by Everyday Plastic, a research-led non-profit focused on evidence-based education and campaigns. With the aim of mobilising and inspiring the UK population to help lift the lid on our recycling, it’s hoped this campaign will hold the government to account and bring real, positive change.

Enviral was awarded the contract after a competitive pitch process. With previous agency nominations including The Drum’s Best Use Of Video For Digital Advertising, Enviral is a full-service ethical brand communications agency based in Bristol that leverages the power of storytelling to effect real change for future generations.

Last week, AgencyUK attended MAD//fest, the UK’s boldest and most distinctive marketing event in the heart of London’s tech and culture scene. The space where top brands, agencies and publishers come to connect, form new relationships, fix industry issues, pitch visionary ideas and celebrate all things Marketing, Advertising and disruption!

We #gotourwings2022 and won two fantastic awards at The Independent Agency Awards 2022, including ‘Best Use of Social Media for Chewits’ and ‘Best FMCG / Retail Campaign for Chewits’!

Rebecca FitzHenry, AgencyUK Senior Account Manager says: “We’re so excited to have won two awards for our work with Chewits. It’s been so great working with Cloetta to reawaken the Chewits brand (and it’s cheeky dino friend Chewie!) This integrated campaign has been a real AgencyUK team effort, from strategy and creative through to continuous learning and optimisations with the social and digital teams. With some amazing results to date, we can’t wait to see what’s next for the brand.”

Huge congratulations to all members of the Social, Digital, Creative, Strategy and Client Services teams for all of your hard work- it has definitely paid off! And that’s not all… AgencyUK were also Highly Commended for the Agency Purpose Awards and shortlisted for Independent Agency of the year!

Sammy Mansourpour, Managing Director says: “In 2019 the AgencyUK management team embarked on an ambitious programme of self improvement for staff, community and environment. Recognition and a Commendation for our efforts by the Independent Agency Purpose Award judges is invaluable and motivating for our team and peers. We cannot wait to continue this journey and share our experiences with the judges again in next year’s entry”.

We are so proud of our achievements as an agency and look forward to creating more great content this year and beyond. See you next year MAD//fest!

We’re delighted to support premium cycle tyre brand Vittoria by launching Great Expectations. This series of mini-docs and social content reveals the inner thoughts of professional riders as they reflect on what cycling means to them.

We created the campaign to take a more personal approach, giving riders the freedom to express what cycling means to them as they prepared for the new season – and The Ride Ahead. It’s all part of The Ride Ahead positioning we developed with the brand’s leadership team that’s now being rolled out across Their global communications.

Filmed on location at the team training camps, Great Expectations launches with riders from XC team Santa Cruz FSA and road team DSM. The films open the door on the curiosity, optimism and courage of each rider in a series of intimate portraits as they share their hopes and ambitions.

“Visiting many places helps you to grow as a man – as a human – because you can see the world from different points of view,” says Maxime Marotte, Santa Cruz FSA, in one of the films.

“One of the nicest things in cycling is to go on a new road – that brings you to a beautiful place,” adds, Romain Bardet, Team DSM.

Firehaus worked with Italian production company Yanzi and director Marco Marcasolli along with the brand’s marketing team on the mini-docs and a range of short edits.

Vittoria CCO Ernesto Garcia Domingo said “ Great Expectations brings a new approach and fresh voices to our audience with pro riders sharing some of their personal insights and motivations. This has been a great collaboration so far under The Ride Ahead banner and we look forward to sharing more over the coming months”.

Ian Bates, Founder and Creative Partner at Firehaus said “This series of mini-docs has given us the space to produce content that is more personal and inspiring”

The Enterprise Sessions is a new content series led by Prof. Michele Barbour Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor: Enterprise and Innovation at the University of Bristol.

The series has been created to inspire entrepreneurs and help them to realise impact from their ideas. Michele interviews founders, researchers and academics from different disciplines and career stages who’ve been part of the University’s Enterprise ecosystem. Each episode is a treasure trove of information covering a range of topics from funding, licensing and IP, consultancy, contract research and business incubation.

Guests include Konstantina Psoma, Professor Wuge Briscoe, Professor Roberta Guerrina and Dr Tom Carter.

Bristol now tops the list of UK universities for the return on investment achieved by spinouts and is ranked in the top 3 for equity investment.

Prof. Michele Barbour said: “The University of Bristol has an impressive track record of enterprise and innovation and we’re keen to share that knowledge within our community as well as with a wider audience. The Enterprise Sessions is a new content series that brings to life the personal stories of spinout Founders and how our enterprise ecosystem has them.

Firehaus took our idea and created a branded content series, introducing the broadcast-style interview approach, as well as the name and look and feel. The approach has allowed me to develop rich conversations with our interviewees and showcase their experience of our ecosystem which will be of huge benefit for anyone involved in research, innovation and enterprise.”

Nick Barthram, Strategy Partner at Firehaus said: “Firehaus has worked with a range of organisations in the Research, Innovation and Enterprise space, including UKRI, Made Smarter Innovation and The University of Bristol. Consequently, we’ve developed a clear understanding and methodology to ignite opportunities at the intersection of academia and industry”.

Strategy, Concept and Art Direction: Firehaus
Film Production: JonesMillbank

The D word. It’s something we don’t talk about enough in our culture, and even when we do, we can’t seem to get the word out. Pushing up the daisies, kicking the bucket, biting the dust… There are so many metaphors to help us avoid directly talking about Death.

This poses a problem for marketing professionals in the charity sector, where gifts in Wills account for up to a third of annual income. When 30% of your revenue is at stake, encouraging your audience to face the inevitability of death becomes essential. Bristol-based CRM agency Flourish have identified this as a challenge and are helping charities to maximise their potential for legacy donations.

A legacy donation is made when someone leaves a gift for a charity in their Will.

For many people, including a charity donation in their Will is a way to ensure their beliefs are honoured when they’re no longer here. Some people choose to pledge a set amount, whereas others opt for a per centage of their estate. However, there are others who slip though the net, and don’t get round to updating their Will at all.

Fortunately, there are awareness days around gifts in Wills – and two of them are on the horizon over the next couple of months. To help charities make the most of these, Flourish is planning a series of articles, case studies and social media posts to help raise awareness of legacy marketing and the challenges that surround it.

Record numbers of people are leaving gifts in their Wills today, partly thanks to increased awareness, demonstrating that an appetite to do something meaningful is there. Charities who provide a sensitive, thoughtful legacy journey have the potential to capture many more legacy donations.

Kim Martin, Executive Creative Director, said, “Fundraising Managers should start planning now to capitalise on awareness days later in the year. It’s a golden opportunity to find hand-raisers who will become pledgers in the future.”

Flourish have worked with a range of not-for-profit organisations over 15 years, providing creative and strategic planning to raise legacy funding from gifts in Wills. This has resulted in some increased revenue for charities including PDSA, Crisis, St Mungo’s, Diabetes UK, CLIC Sargent and many more.

If you need help communicating about legacy fundraising to your audience, get in touch with Flourish and we’ll be happy to offer a free customer journey review in time for the upcoming legacy fundraising awareness days.

Wednesday 29 June saw us attend the UK Digital Growth Awards in Marble Arch, London and return to the South West triumphant, with three trophies in hand!

Launch was awarded Best Use of Data for ISO consultancy client IMSM and B2B PPC Campaign of the Year for office property client Argyll, before going on to scoop PPC Agency of the Year as the evening drew to a close.

Judges’ feedback noted how ‘everything Launch brought forward as an agency was interesting’ and recognised how ‘impactful’ and ‘well planned and executed’ the campaigns were. They also highlighted our people-centric focus and positive employee experience, where we’ve placed an increasing emphasis on our staff’s wellbeing and happiness, having tripled in team size since the beginning of 2021.

Jaye Cowle, Managing Director at Launch, says: “It’s absolutely brilliant to be able to add these Growth awards to our awards shelf – particularly following such a tricky time in the industry. We’re delighted that the judges have recognised our dedication to our staff and their happiness. It’s an ongoing mission of ours and this just proves we’re on the right path.”