What Women Want

Numerous studies, such as IPSOS’s A Woman’s Worth, System 1’s Feeling Seen, and research from the Geena Davis Institute, indicate that women continue to feel inaccurately represented in advertising. Despite the findings of the Unstereotype Alliance’s State of the Industry report, which underscores the importance of acknowledging intersectionality and promoting all kinds of diverse women, statistics confirm that, for instance,  women of colour, lesbians, women with disabilities and midlife women still feel particularly underrepresented. 

Our New Creative Campaign

Our latest campaign, a collaboration with Billion Dollar Boy, Pinterest, Snap and Youtube, spotlights four leading female voices from the creator industry. They emphasise the importance of representing all women authentically, particularly in areas where they are often overlooked or misrepresented. Each of the creators was chosen for her pivotal role in fostering meaningful discussions about female representation across their growing communities on social media.

This latest creative campaign builds on that of our 100th year, where we first launched our #RepresentMe initiative to remind the industry of the importance of more positive and authentic representation of women and girls. Positive representation makes women and girls feel better about themselves, influences how boys and men perceive women and girls, and benefits business outcomes (read more here). We also launched TV, cinema, and OOH ads (with thanks to Dove and ITV Creative), and highlighted other campaigns such as Orange’s la Compil des Bleues and Sainsbury’s Tu and Me, which women and girls told us represented them as they wanted to be seen.

Selma Nicholls and Chloe Davies from the WACL Represent Me committee spoke with creators Trina Nicole, Lucy Edwards, Jamelia Donaldson, and Ellen Jones, exploring their perspectives on representation in advertising. These conversations have been compiled into longer-form films and short clips available on our Youtube Channel.