Brands that stereotype

As companies and ad agencies try and present men and women in non-stereotypical roles, they need to ensure that the change in roles does not end up creating a subplot that is confusing

Earlier this year UN Women in partnership with Unilever and industry leaders such as IPG, WPP, Facebook, Google, Mars, Microsoft and J&J announced the launch of the Unstereotype Alliance, a new global alliance set up to banish stereotypical portrayal of gender in advertisements and all branding content.

The fact that brands tend to use stereotypical images is something that has been written about and researched extensively. Enough to say that there is little love lost between the liberal arts academic world and the world of advertising.

One of the early works on studying gender presentation in advertising is the book, Gender Advertisements, by Erving Goffman. Prof Goffman is considered by some as the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century. He served as tenured professor of sociology at University of California at Berkeley. In the book Gender Advertisements, published in 1979, he examines a few hundred print advertisements for American brands, across diverse product groups. His research indicated that advertisements tend to play up the role of the male and present the women in a subservient role. Even when showing a family it is the male who is allowed to occupy the dominant position. In terms of size the picture always shows the women as a smaller figure. One of the concepts that he postulated is the idea of “hyper-ritualisation”; companies and brands tend to hype up the stereotypical images of man and woman.

Playing it safe: Brands tend to stereotype because they want to use the valuable time to communicate their brand story and not lose the consumer on a message decoding journey

Erving Goffman’s study has been followed up by many researchers. In a longitudinal study of Indian television ads for packaged consumer products, this author too saw that, even if you take a time span of 40 years from 1970s to 2010s, presentation of women has not changed significantly. They are still presented in the primary caregiver, homemaker and nurturer of children roles. Men often play the role of the breadwinner and sometimes the doting father.

Why is it so difficult to portray genders differently?

In today’s attention-starved world, brands are desperately using the narrow window of opportunity that consumers offer them, often less than 30 seconds, to diligently communicate their brand benefits. These may be rational (our detergent washes brightest), or emotional (you will feel proud how bright your kids look) or even social (save water while washing clothes). This task itself seems unsurmountable and if you layer this with the task of presenting women or men in “non-stereotypical” role, you are asking for a lot from a 30-second window. For a minute, let us ignore the long-format films that are used in digital media. There the opportunities are different, so are the challenges of holding consumer attention.

There is yet another problem. If I am advertising a food product or a cooking aid, like a ready-to-make dish, and if I show a man cooking the dish, what will the consumer decode? Communication theory tells us about the various stages: sender — codes message — decoding by receiver — receiver “gets” the message. Will they see the dish as “so easy to make that ‘even’ a man can make it”? Or will they decode it as something meant for bachelors only? If in the film we bring a woman, then what happens?

Brands tend to stereotype because they want to use the valuable time to communicate their brand story and not lose the consumer on a message decoding journey.

It is true that sometimes using a different gender helps highlight a feature or tell a brand story better. A leading brand of SUV used women drivers in many of its ads, just to communicate the fact that the SUV is a pleasure and easy to drive. But some felt that this may make the macho SUV look too effeminate.

What can we expect from the companies that have signed the Unstereotype Alliance? Will they stop showing men and women in the traditional stereotypical roles? For instance, will we start seeing men doing the laundry in a detergent ad? What will that be decoded as in the Indian market? Easy-to-use detergent? What if that is not the intended message? What if the intended message is that the detergent saves a lot of water? Will the use of a male confuse or corroborate?

The idea of sensitising companies and ad agencies towards “hyper-ritualisation” and “gender stereotyping” is indeed very useful. But as we try and present men and women in non-stereotypical roles, we need to ensure that the mere change in the roles presented does not end up creating a subplot that is confusing.

This challenge is even more palpable in a country like India where television is yet to reach all households (though it is getting there soon). Consumers are still getting their feet wet on several new product categories and need fairly simple messages that they can decode and interpret (no wonder Indian packaged goods ads always have a rather long product description window).

If you start seeing all ads on television that show men cooking, women going to work, men picking up children from school, fighting in PTA meets, I wonder what will happen. Will the ads start looking too weird? Or will they start nudging the society towards relooking at gender-defined roles? I do hope that it is the latter that will play out. 

The author is an independent brand strategist, author and founder, Brand-Building.com, a brand advisory. He can be reached on ambimgp@brand-building.com