NEW DIRECTION
Ad giant P&G looking to diminish gender gap, raising female director presence to 50 per cent,
SOUTHFIELD, MICH.— Procter & Gamble Co. is putting the advertising industry on notice.
The world’s biggest advertiser wants female directors for at least half of its product commercials by 2023, up from about one in 10 today. It’s a direct challenge to the maledominated agency world, from a client that spent more than $7 billion (U.S.) on advertising last year.
“Equality drives growth,” said Marc Pritchard, the company’s chief brand officer.
“If we just achieve equality in economic empowerment between women and men, it could add $28 trillion to world economy. That’s a lot of purchasing power.”
At the Cannes Lions advertising festival Monday, P&G was scheduled to announce a series of initiatives to support women in advertising and behind the camera. The company will sign on to the “Free The Bid” pledge, which requires at least one female director to be included among the final candidates to produce commercials.
“Free the Bid,” a project by filmmaker Alma Har’el, who also produced an Olympics anti-bias commercial for P&G, already has a pool of 700 direc- tors operating in 10 countries. P&G says it will work with other big advertisers and with Publicis Groupe SA, its biggest ad agency, to double the reach of the program. The company is also trying to close its own gender gap at the brand-director level, where women hold 41 per cent of positions.
To encourage female directors in the pipeline, P&G is also set to announce a partnership with Queen Latifah’s Queen Collective and advertisers including HP and Smirnoff, to create two 12-minute films produced by women. Tide, Olay, Head & Shoulders and other P&G brands will work to promote those films, Pritchard said.
The company has also teamed up with Katie Couric in support of her new media company, which she says will accurately portray women and other under-represented groups.
The first web series, Getting There, will feature the stories of professionally successful women and it will be produced through a partnership with the Skimm, a news media company that focuses on a female, millennial audience.
“The landscape is changing dramatically,” Couric said in an interview ahead of the announcement. “Brands like Procter & Gamble are looking for more effective ways to connect with consumers. Consumers are really smarter than ever, and I think they want to better understand the ethos of a brand and what they stand for.” Women’s empowerment has become the centrepiece of P&G’s marketing around the world. The company’s Whisper brand tackled menstruation taboos in India. Its SK-II brand of skin care took on the pressure to marry faced by Chinese women and the stigma they feel when they don’t. In Saudi Arabia, the “Generation of Firsts” campaign for Always products celebrated new freedoms for women in the kingdom.