Advocacy group taps creators to call for gender equality in ad industry

Dive Brief:

Advocacy group Women in Advertising, Communications and Leadership (WACL) has launched a creator-backed campaign designed to accelerate gender equality and representation in the advertising industry, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
Key to the effort is a tie-up with four prominent women creators who appear in various clips discussing what representation in advertising means to them. The campaign was made in partnership with Snap, YouTube, Pinterest and influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.
The campaign is part of WACL’s ongoing “Represent Me” initiative, which similarly pushes for gender equality in the ads industry. The campaign arrives as recent findings indicate that marketing workforce diversity has slipped.

Dive Insight:

WACL’s latest effort is based on a growing body of evidence — including studies from Ipsos, System 1 and the Geena Davis Institute — indicating that women do not feel accurately represented in advertising, particularly when it comes to intersectionality that also includes race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and age. Accordingly, the advocacy group’s campaign is calling for change with an effort noteworthy for its heavy use of influencers for business-related marketing.

“The representation of women in advertising is still disgracefully inadequate. We, as an industry, are not taking this issue seriously enough,” said Nishma Patel Robb, president of WACL, in a statement. “This creative campaign demonstrates the breadth of real women and their stories, showing audiences every woman matters. Seeing the world through the eyes of these creators, all of whom have amassed a significant following, is proof that audiences want to hear from women like these.”

Central to the effort are partnerships with four female creators, each of whom embody the intersectionality of being a woman combined with other identifying qualities. Among them are: Trina Nicole, a body confidence influencer and founder of the UK’s first plus-size dance class; Ellen Jones, a writer, speaker and activist for neurodiversity and LGBTQ+ issues; Jamelia Donaldson, founder and CEO of TreasureTress and advocate for the natural hair landscape; and Lucy Edwards, a broadcaster, journalist, author and disability activist.

Videos for the campaign feature WACL Represent Me committee members Selma Nicholls and Chloe Davies in personal conversations, asking the creators to answer the question, “What does representation in advertising mean to you?” and how that impacts their outlook and work. They were then invited to sit down together to explore the topic, and the conversations were edited into a short-film, as well as shorter clips.

EssenceMediacomX under a team led by Jessica Lenehan supported the campaign with media planning and by activating paid advertising credits supplied by Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube.

The latest move from WACL builds upon a previous effort that highlighted the importance of positive gender representation in advertising on young girls and their future possibilities. This year’s execution, made in collaboration with Billion Dollar Boy, calls on everyone to be part of the conversation and champion a more positive and authentic representation of all kinds of women in advertising.

“This campaign matters because creators are pushing our industry forward. Through the audiences they've built, they've realised the need for greater representation and their own power to challenge the status quo and demand better for all women in advertising,” said Becky Owen, global CMO at Billion Dollar Boy, in a statement. “Creator marketing has put new voices, diverse voices and representative voices at the heart of our industry.”

The campaign also comes as some findings indicate that workplace diversity in marketing has slipped. Specifically, ethnic representation among marketers fell last year, reversing a yearslong trend that saw diversity on an upward trajectory, according to a report from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing and SeeHer. Women continue to drive the advertising and marketing workforce, per the report, making up a majority in 2023.

Brands have also gotten involved in the conversation on a larger scale. For example, E.l.f. Beauty recently launched a campaign, entitled “So Many Dicks,” calling for more diversity in U.S. corporate boardrooms. The campaign’s name is inspired by the finding that there are nearly as many men named Richard, Rick or Dick as women from diverse groups on U.S. corporate boards.