You have, no doubt, heard about the ad industry’s latest attempts to counter (arguably accurate) claims that it’s a retrograde boys’ club with the help of Cindy Gallop and Facebook COO/Lean In founder Sheryl Sandberg, who supposedly pitched the idea.
The question follows: which campaigns will compete? How crowded will the field be? How much does the advertising industry itself welcome this sort of progress?
The Cannes statement lays out some vague standards for qualification: submissions must be “highly creative, positive and progressive implicit or explicit contributions to gender representation within creative advertising and communications” that “seek to promote more inclusive, gender aware forms of brand communication rooted in creative excellence.”
The page includes some bold statements: women make up every client’s most important consumer base and the industry at large needs, on some level, to atone for its past sins.
“The way gender is represented in marketing has a negative impact on not only women but on society as a whole. Institutional change and policy reform alone won’t solve gender inequalities; the solution is a deep cultural change.”
Some may debate how directly the marketing practice shapes the culture at large and how many campaigns encourage or expand upon gender stereotypes rather than countering them in some way, but this looks like an award for effectively selling products to women.
The inaugural crop of contenders will feature Droga5’s Under Armour campaign, Leo Burnett’s Always work, and…?