Diversity in ad industry lags, study finds
While Super Bowl XLIX commercials were more sensitive and less gender offensive than in past years, women and people of color remain vastly underrepresented among the creative directors who are producing those ads, according to a diversity study released Wednesday.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida released its annual report showing the advertising industry’s continuing disparity in hiring practices in terms of race and gender.
The study found that of the 42 Super Bowl ads in 2015 for which data was available, only three — or 7 percent — featured exclusively a person of color as the lead creative director. By contrast, 86 percent featured a white creative director and 7 percent featured both a white person and person of color.
In terms of gender, 81 percent of the creative directors were male, 13 percent of creative directors featured both a male and a female. Only 7 percent were exclusively females.
Richard Lapchick, the primary author of this study and director of TIDES, said the percentage of people of color and women in creating and producing the Super Bowl ads hasn’t changed much.
“It’s one of those industries where there has not been much movement over the years,” Lapchick said. “The NFL and the Super Sexual content, such as GoDaddy. com ads with Jillian Michaels, is declining, the TIDES survey found. Bowl audience is very diverse, and it’s just not reflected in the people who are preparing and creating these ads.”
The study also pointed out that of 61 commercials, 19 had African- Americans in a lead role, a significant increase since when the study was first conducted in 2011.
Lapchick believes that the key figures of Madison Avenue advertising agencies should mirror the NFL’s efforts when it comes to the improved hiring practices of people of color and women in recent years.
The adoption of the Rooney Rule, which increases the pool of minority coaching candidates, has helped the NFL has received an overall A grade for its racial hiring practice in each of the past five years. The NFL earned a C- minus for its gender hiring practices in 2014, for an overall grade of B.
Lapchick said he was pleasantly surprised with the overall content of this year’s Super Bowl commercials compared with recent years.
In previous years, Super Bowl ads routinely used gratuitous sexual content, gender stereotypes and gender roles to sell a company’s product or service. However, he said the use of sex to sell and objectifying women was very limited in 2015.
“As our team watched the Super Bowl and watched the individual ads there was a large degree of surprise at the non- stereotypical ads, but also the positive images that were being portrayed,” Lapchick said. He also believes advertising directors were more sensitive about gender violence following the Ray Rice domestic abuse case.