By Amala Dasarathi
Unilever, the owner of several big brands like Axe, Lifebuoy, Sunsilk, Knorr and Dove, recently announced that they will no longer peddle sexist stereotypes in their ads. Instead, they have a new global strategy to “unstereotype”. This change comes after two years of research conducted by Unilever, who found that 40 percent of the women surveyed said that they cannot relate to the women they see in ad campaigns. Their research also found that only 3 percent of women in ads are seen in professional leaderships roles, while an extremely high number are seen in domestic roles.
There’s no denying that things desperately need to change. Knorr ads, for instance, typically show a mother cooking for her son, like in this one for instant tomato soup. Surf Excel’s ads, as we wrote about recently, mostly have boys who play outside and get dirty (girls hardly feature as primary characters in these ads), with the tagline “Achcha Daag”. It’s not unlike the Lifebuoy ads in which it’s largely little boys who need to scrub away germs with handwash. Then there’s Surf Excel forgettable “As Good As Mom’s Handwash” tagline.
Axe ads, which typically show women pursuing men who wear Axe (apparently because they suddenly smell sexy), will be replaced by a new campaign called ‘Find your magic’. This campaign hopes to represent “a world in which genuine connection beats conquest” and “true magic happens between two equals,” Aline Santos, the executive vice-president of Unilever, told ET.
It isn’t just Unilever’s advertising that is sexist — there’s a long, long list. Think of all the advertising deodorants, condoms, vaginal tightening creams sold on sex but done terribly. The beauty ads selling women insecurity. That Ford ad by JWT that was never officially released but made it to the Internet anyway. We can’t wait for everyone else to start working harder on not having ads that suck.