Brands take a stand

Firms are moving out of their comfort zone to address sensitive issues

The day after billionaire-turned-politician Donald Trump was sworn in as the president of the United States, a Bengaluru-based start-up Nestaway chose to express its feelings in an interesting way. Front-page ads in leading dailies dwelt on the need to ‘Trump’ biases, partisanship, parochialism, inequalities, racism and sexism among other issues. The message was blunt: A ‘white house’ should never discriminate, drawing the attention of the reader to do away with injustice both at home and outside of it.

For a start-up operating in the online marketplace for shared home rentals, the link between the White House, whose current occupant is controversial and homes managed by the firm, which it claims do not discriminate against cast, colour, gender, race or creed, was clever.  

This is only one example, say, experts, of how brands are picking up cues from their surroundings and weaving them into their advertising. The resultant patchwork quilt while layered is also endearing them to consumers. People are sitting up and taking note of this kind of advertising.

Take another example, which addresses the issue of women’s safety head-on. Watchmaker Titan came up with a special women’s line under the Sonata brand last month, equipped with a safety feature called ACT, short for App-Enabled Coordinates Tracker. This feature alerts 10 contacts of the whereabouts of the user when activated. 

The ads launched to promote this feature were simple and direct. Two women athletes are on their way for national selections. Night has fallen and they halt at a bus-stop, where a family of three are also seated. The lady of the family is predictably worried about the safety of the girls, but the latter show no fear thanks to the new feature on their watches. The lady is impressed, telling her husband that the girls will go far ahead, implying not only in terms of the bus ride they will take, but also when it comes to life’s journey itself.  

While critics argue that gender-sensitive ads can be skin-deep with brands using the platform to promote themselves, some say this needn’t be the case at all.

According to K V Sridhar, former chief creative officer, SapientNitro, who now runs his own agency Hyper Collective, there are three reasons for the rise of gender sensitivity in advertising. “Advertising has become purpose-driven thanks to the standardisation of products and services. The differentiator, therefore, is the stand a brand takes. Second, consumers themselves have undergone a transformation and are today demanding that brands have values and don’t go after profit alone. Third, the rise of social media is ensuring that brands are kept under check when it comes to their imagery and messaging,” he says. Those that cross the line are being pulled up, he adds.

Titan itself faced all-round ire for objectifying women when Fastrack, its youth-centric watches and accessories brand, released an outdoor ad in 2014 which showed a woman wrapped in a sale tag offering 20 per cent discount. The outrage was natural with the ad removed from billboards and hoardings across cities.  

Last year Fastrack was at it again, when an ad on twitter suggested that going back to college was about cheating on your girlfriend. Other ads in the series dwelt on things such as hanging out with friends and going back to the grind of studies. But the girlfriend ad was clearly offensive with Fastrack attaching a hashtag ‘BacktoCheating’ for maximum impact.  

There were still more such “sexist ads” such as cab aggregator Ola’s recent take on the expense incurred in taking one’s girlfriend out for a date, linking it to the price of an economical service called Ola Micro. The company was forced to pull down the ad following twitter outrage.

Paying lip service to gender sensitivity?

So the wheel comes a full circle then: Are brands paying lip service to gender sensitivity? "I don’t think most (gender sensitive) ads get it right,” says Tista Sen, national creative director & senior vice president, J Walter Thompson, Mumbai. "If women are shown taking a stand and celebrating it, that I think would be a far bigger direction for gender sensitivity to take,” she says.

An example of this was the recent ‘Will of Steel’ campaign by JSW Steel. It fused the idea of the strength that steel imparts to the inner strength of an individual, selecting wrestler Geeta Phogat to deliver the message.

In the campaign, the voice of a member of a khap panchayat, kangaroo courts common in Haryana, was juxtaposed against visuals of Phogat practising as a wrestler.  The voice is a metaphor for society and how it bogs a woman down with patriarchal norms, while Phogat stood for the woman who fights this mindset to achieve her dreams.

“Bringing up an issue is the first step towards behavioural change. It encourages conversations,” Gunjan Soni, chief marketing officer & head of international brands, Myntra, says. The fashion e-tailer itself has been addressing sensitive issues such as same-sex relationships and single parenting through its private label Anouk in recent campaigns. The effort then among advertisers to take a stand is on.