Some Marketers Moving Away From Dated Gender Targeting, Study Shows
28 Gennaio 2019 - 12:29PM
Dow Jones News
By Lara O'Reilly
Some marketers are starting to edge away from dated gender-based
strategies -- such as exclusively targeting household cleaning
products at women, or entirely overlooking men who buy diapers --
but others haven't changed at all, according to a study due to be
published this week.
Research company Kantar found that brands in categories
including food and drink adopted modestly more balanced gender
targeting for their ads between 2010 and 2018, while the laundry
and household cleaner segments saw more recent changes between 2017
and 2018. Categories including auto haven't seen significant
changes in recent years, according to Kantar.
The global study looked for shifts through the lens of the ad
tests that it performs for marketers, in which brands ask it to
interview or survey men and women in certain proportions. The
desired gender splits in the tests are a good stand-in for
advertisers' target audiences for the ads, according to Kantar.
The company analyzed more than 18,000 ad tests across six
marketing categories that it carried out in more than 40 countries
between 2010 and 2018.
Brands testing ads within the baby products, laundry products
and household cleaner categories asked Kantar to look at an almost
entirely female target audience, 98% on average, from 2010 to 2018.
On the other side of the scale, women made up just 29% of the
sample when motor oil brands were testing their ads.
The small shifts that have occurred recently, as in household
cleaning, may have been spurred in part by broader industry
initiatives to change marketers' thinking around gender, according
to Duncan Southgate, global brand director for media in Kantar's
insights division.
Unilever and UN Women, a United Nations group that seeks to
empower women, formed the Unstereotype Alliance in 2017, for
example, to fight gender stereotypes in advertising and improve the
gender balance in senior marketing leadership and creative roles.
Members include Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson,
Diageo PLC, Google, Mars Inc. and Kantar parent company WPP PLC.
Free the Bid, another effort, encourages brands and agencies to
consider female directors for their commercials.
Changing consumer behavior also is forcing marketers to rethink
their strategies. Most household buying decisions are now made by
both men and women: 85% of women and 68% of men considered
themselves the main grocery buyer in 2017, according to a Kantar
survey.
And the cultural conversation about gender has only become more
prominent in recent years. "The #MeToo movement, among other
things, has put a spotlight on gender equality in society at large,
and that's healthy," said Kantar's Mr. Southgate.
Unilever CMO Keith Weed said greater gender representation in
advertising is "an economic issue, not just a moral issue."
The consumer-goods giant conducted research in 2017 and 2018
that found making progress in this area improved purchase intent by
18% and improved consumers' view of a brand's credibility by 21%.
Unilever also has broadened its targeting by gender and age, Mr.
Weed said.
Deliberate Effort
Spirits giant Diageo last year reviewed its creative work around
the world to see where it needed to change the way it portrayed
gender. It drew up a framework of four areas to consider, such as
the way marketing characterizes gender, and is training its 1,200
marketers and its agencies to apply it to their work. Diageo has
shared the framework with other companies.
"We just hope people will put their heads above the parapet and
see that the risks are mostly in their heads," said Diageo Chief
Marketing Officer Syl Saller.
The U.K.'s ad regulator is applying pressure as well. Starting
in June, the U.K. will ban ads with gender stereotypes "that are
likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offense," such as an
ad that shows a woman struggling to park a car or a man being
teased for performing stereotypically "female" tasks.
The majority of global marketers believe they are avoiding
gender bias in their ads already, according to a survey of 468
marketing leaders across brands, agencies and media computers
conducted by Kantar last year. Just over three-quarters of female
marketers polled by Kantar last year said they were very or
somewhat confident they were creating ads that avoid gender
stereotypes, compared with 88% of male marketers who answered the
same.
"If you haven't scored a huge PR own-goal maybe you think things
must be OK," said Mr. Southgate. But marketers may be grading their
work more leniently than consumers, he said.
"Almost half of the consumers we speak to don't think the
portrayals are appropriate."
Write to Lara O'Reilly at lara.oreilly@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 28, 2019 06:14 ET (11:14 GMT)
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