Did manufacturers surrender on Worldwide Girls's Day?
On that day four years ago, the marketing industry was full of excitement over a new campaign launched on International Women's Day. Under the title Fearless Girl, a bronze statue of a young girl was placed in front of the famous Charging Bull statue in the financial district of New York City.
The statue was the work of artist Kristen Visbal, who was commissioned by asset management company State Street Global Advisors to create the work in recognition of their Gender Diversity Index, which aimed to encourage more diversity in their senior management.
Fearless Girl was a bold statement and made a splash. While many celebrated the strength and boldness of it, others were less impressed. The first to complain was the artist behind the bull Arturo De Modica, who said the new statue was a "promotional ploy" that would change the meaning of his work of art. This resulted in it being postponed a month after launch.
Others pointed out that the company wasn't always as committed to gender equality when it looked deeper into State Street Global Advisors. And there have also been complaints that the statue portrayed a girl, not a woman.
Fearless Girl was arguably the culmination of a trend in advertising brands showing their support for women through empowering advertising campaigns and initiatives
Despite all of this, the statue undoubtedly had a cultural influence. Tourists to New York City wanted to have their picture taken of it, and back in Adland, the Cannes Lions Festival wanted to shower it with awards (including promotional awards), which it did in the summer of 2017.
Fearless Girl was arguably the culmination of a trend in advertising brands showing their support for women through empowering advertising campaigns and initiatives. During that time, it ran some great ads including Always ’Like A Girl, This Girl Can (running) and Libresses recent ad campaigns which include the hit movies Viva La Vulva and #wombstories.
As with any advertising trend, there were plenty of bum scores along the way as brands tried to get into the game with staggering efforts. However, a lot of commitment – and money – has clearly been put into demonstrating that women matter.
Fast forward to today, and this year's IWD is something of a wet detonator. Over the past week I've gotten myself ready for a number of serious ads in support of women, but somewhat unexpectedly, they haven't arrived. Yes, it was tweeted a lot from brands today, but beyond that, what came in felt pretty half-hearted: a nice but not exciting campaign from Spotify and an honestly weird redesign of the numbers on London intersections by Siemens Mobility seem to be on its outstanding moments.
The fight for equality is clearly not over. Where are the brands now? Perhaps, as was feared all along, her commitment to women was just down on trend
I'm not saying that this brings much relief – targeted advertising can get taxing when it's all about words and no substance, and as the new book Brandsplaining, which we wrote about just last week, makes it clear, it's for For many brands, it is still a way of reaching female consumers in a non-objectionable way.
Still, I'm still disappointed. As has been widely reported, the pandemic has been particularly difficult for women, who have been hardest hit by childcare problems and homeschooling, and there are fears that the gender pay gap will widen as a result. The fight for equality is clearly not over. Where are the brands now? Perhaps, as feared all along, her commitment to women was just trend-driven and has now been replaced by more pressing problems?
Or have you realized that superficial campaigns can only go so far and that deeper, more systematic changes are required, starting first under the management level of the brands themselves and then with the creative agencies they work with? One can only hope that this will happen behind the scenes and that they will all have a year off from IWD as a result. However, I find it hard to believe that if it had been the case, there would not have been a press release about it today. Instead, the marketing world is strangely calm.