Women a hot topic at Cannes
Advertisers struggle to reach them
CANNES, The marketing FRANCE and media world has big women issues.
Advertisers still debate the best ways to market to women. Media firms are still trying to find the ideal forums to entertain and inform this gender. And companies in these industries, like many others, have a lack of women in top positions.
There are still controversial, even sexist, communications being produced, such as a recent JWT India print ad for Ford that caricatured Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, grinning at three young women bound and gagged in the back of a Ford Figo. And Swiffer just felt a big backlash when it re-imagined Rosie the Riveter, an icon for strong working women, out of the factory and back in her housekeeping role with a steam cleaner in her hands.
How to address such problems is a hot topic at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the ad world’s trade show and awards event.
Many large companies are using the festival as a forum to discuss how to bolster communications to and about women, as well as how to help them climb the corporate ranks.
AOL held two events focused on women. On Sunday, it hosted a panel that looked at women’s accomplishments and hurdles. Activist Gloria Steinem spoke. On Monday, it cohosted with Omnicom Group, an advertising holding company, a panel about communicating with diverse consumer groups. A focus of that event was marketing to women.
On Tuesday, AOL will announce an expansion of its Makers initiative, which uses video to tell the stories of famous women such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, as well as lesser-known female pioneers such as Barbara Burns, one of the first female coal miners.
In February, AOL will host a women’s empowerment conference in Southern California. Participants will include high-profile people who have been featured on Makers videos, in- cluding Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Ogilvy & Mather Chairman Emeritus Shelly Lazarus.
AOL will ask other corporations to recommend three high-potential female employees from any level or area of their organizations to attend, said Maureen Sullivan, AOL general manager of women’s content. Those women will then be able to meet “Makers” and learn from them and others at the conference, she said.
On Wednesday, advertising holding company Interpublic Group will host its third annual “Diversity and Inclusion Summit at Cannes.”
CEO Michael Roth is slated to discuss advances that have been made by and for women in the ad industry and work that remains to be done.
In a new worldwide survey of 976 marketing professionals from IPG and Advertising Age magazine, nearly 68% said they reported to a man.
In the USA, 75% of women surveyed called “gender diversity” a problem; 30% deemed it a major problem. Only 13% of men in the U.S. thought it was a major problem; 53% said it was not a problem at all.
When it comes to the hot-button topic of a lack of women in creative departments of ad agencies, Mark O’Brien, president of DDB North America, said he thought it was a “greater perception than reality,” noting that at least three in 10 employees in DDB’s North America offices are women.
At the Cannes ad festival, woman have a lesser role in choosing award winners. Of the 16 award juries, which are made up mainly of people who work on the creative side of their industry, just two have female presidents.
On Monday, one jury president, TBWA\Worldwide Global Creative President Rob Schwartz, said he “probably judged with more women than I have with any other (award) show.” His panel of 30 had six female members.