WACL’s Represent Me Ad of the Month: Tu
The way we represent people in our work doesn’t just have the power to change consumer behaviour and drive business growth for our clients. It also influences the way all of us understand ourselves, and each other.
That’s why, in our centenary year, we’ve created the WACL100 #RepresentMe initiative, encouraging the whole industry to represent all kinds of women and girls even better in future. Each month, we celebrate an ad that does just that, and share some useful insight about how it came to be.
This #RepresentMe Ad of the Month, Sainsbury’s ‘Tu & Me’ campaign, was singled out for praise by the girls in the #RepresentMe workshop we ran at Kensington Aldridge Academy. They told us that the ad made them feel like ‘you don’t have to change yourself to fit in with man’s society, so I like that.’ They praised how it’s different from the typical fashion ads that are ‘usually white women who are a very, very skinny body type and have this, like, outlook’ and loved the fact that ‘this one is more representative and more diverse.’ They recognised how important this was too: ‘I think it matters because people need to feel like they’re included.’
That’s clearly something Tu campaign Manager Sophie Micklewright believes too, as she tells us ‘We want our advertising to reflect real life, and real life isn’t a one size fits all world. It’s full of wonderful diversity. We believe everyone deserves to feel beautiful in what they wear and that we want to use our advertising to convey this message. Tu is a brand for everyone.’
Nici Hofer, Founder/Artistic Director at New Commercial Arts, wholeheartedly agrees, adding: ‘For too long, fashion models have embodied a stereotype. It’s so refreshing to work with a client that allows us to cast beyond narrow beauty standards and reinforced stereotypes. Featuring models of various ethnicities, sizes, ages, disabilities and genders simply means encouraging people to embrace their individuality and celebrates the real-world diversity of our audience: I want people to see themselves in our ads.’ And she explained how she’s inspired by people who wear fashion in an ‘authentically themself’ way, who exude style in a gloriously unique manner, and said that she wanted to bring this feeling into the ads – ‘After all, fashion is a form of self-expression.’
At WACL, we know that it’s important to show women and girls expressing themselves, taking up space, being active and not ornamental – just as women and girls are in real life. And importantly, as one of the KAA girls put it, ‘it’s not just about how you feel about yourself…it influences the way men think about us as well, and how you’re viewed in a relationship.’
Nici expresses this shared belief really powerfully, telling us: ‘I believe in the power of women taking up space in their surroundings’, and she explained that ‘by dynamic posing with a lot of movement, we achieve the feeling of our models owning the space.’ She and the team designed the models’ movement to capture their energy and personality in the shots, creating a dynamic and confident feel that oozes self-confidence. And she shared a useful tip too, about how it’s often worth the extra effort to embrace street casting, in addition to the usual model agency casting process, because ‘the most interesting, the surprising and the never-seen-before faces quite often are found where you least expect them.’
No wonder Radha Davies, Director of Brands, Planning & Creative for Sainsbury’s, Habitat, Argos, and Tu told us ‘I’m really proud of what my team and our agency NCA have achieved with this work. Representation matters, and our ability to be inclusive in such a visible & uplifting way is what Tu is all about.’As Melda Simon, UK Lead at Unstereotype Alliance sums up: ‘Advertising should aim to normalise all body types, champion body diversity and break down stereotypes, and this Tu campaign is a wonderful example of that in action.’ We couldn’t agree more, and we’re delighted to see the newest execution in the campaign doing just as good a job as the previous one did too.
About the author
The Others & Me; Author of No More Menemies