Progressive gender portrayal in mainstream advertisements shows an uplift in brand equity and short-term sales, says Soumya Mohanty of Kantar

Whenever gender portrayal is shown in a progressive way whether it is male or female characters, it actually helps the business grow, said Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director & Chief Client Officer, Insights Division, Kantar.

Mohanty added that with progressive gender portrayal there is an uplift in both brand equity and short-term sales according to data with Kantar. This year, Kantar discovered that many companies have benefited greatly from gender progressiveness getting more mainstream.

As per a study conducted by GenderNext, it has been revealed that real women considered themselves more progressive than depictions in mainstream advertising.

Hence, it is not surprising that Kantar found that progressive portrayals of women result in advertising that is more effective. Indian advertisements depicting progressive gender roles had a positive impact of as much as 32% in short-term product sales and improved a brand’s equity by 51%, showed the study.

Kantar recently unveiled the ads that were most effective and creative in 2021 across India. The company tested more than 13,000 creatives for clients around the world. 10% (1300+) of those creatives were tested in India alone. Over 360 commercials were shortlisted for the India research, which evaluated them across media platforms, marketplaces, TGs, and categories.

According to Mohanty, there is a lot of data that shows that many of their winners this year have actually portrayed progressive gender roles.

Talking about one of the winners, that is Amazon Grocery, Mohanty explained how beautifully it has been shown, where you have the man and the woman who recently got married and they are navigating their gender roles and they're discussing what their roles should be in the marriage. These are pragmatic, practical realities of marriage and finally arriving at the fact that Amazon helps us do it together better.

Amazon ad:

But the majority of mainstream advertising still portrays women negatively and unfavourably, as per the study.

Explaining the use of harmful and non-aspirational portrayals of women in the majority of mainstream, the things the advertising agencies must keep in mind before creating such content, Mohanty said, “We are actually partnering with ASCI in trying to sensitise both advertisers and agencies, about the benefits of gender progressive portrayal. Most of the time we end up stereotyping and that’s the reason our metric is called Unstereotype, which is what Kantar measures. So, normalising as humans is important and not as gender stereotypical roles and that is something that the advertising agencies should be careful about.”

“One of the other ads that I really want to call out is ‘Nihar’, the hair oil ad. One of the things is that there's a long history and legacy of how we are, our culture. And somewhere we tend to go wrong when we are trying to talk about progressive elements is we tend to take on culture head-on and I want to fight it out and that sometimes doesn’t work. If you see the Nihar ad, the way it works is not taking on anything, she is able to express herself, express her identity without necessarily repelling, in a very overt way and everybody around her actually supports her. I think that is the positive message we need to take where we are chipping away at all these wrong portrayals and issues, rather than taking it head-on.”

Nihar ad:

Though, whenever the gender portrayal is shown in a progressive way whether it is male or female characters, it actually helps the business and that’s what the data of Kantar shows. There is an uplift in brand equity, and in short-term sales both added Mohanty.

After the pandemic, brands raised their media and advertising spending. More money was invested in digital platforms, and more media channels are also coming on to digital.

Commenting on the TV and digital space of advertising, she said that in digital you can capture the trend. “Digital gives you the space to talk about any topical issue which television may not give you and brands generally jump on to it. But one of the things that we need to be careful of, especially in digital space when you're talking about progressive gender portrayal, is that we need to be careful of the cultural context otherwise it could backfire at times.”

According to the study, the brands can unlock higher marketing ROI through the use of progressive portrayals of gender, in fact, within evolving markets, positive gender roles have an even higher impact on India. “Across countries, we stick back to the same pattern in terms of what they should do, so, your ability to push the epilogue in terms of role reversals is much higher in many more evolved countries,” concluded Mohanty.

Kantar on June 23 unveiled the ads that were most effective and creative in 2021 across India. The company tested more than 13,000 creatives for clients around the world. 10% (1300+) of those creatives were tested in India alone. Over 360 commercials were shortlisted for the India research, which evaluated them across media platforms, marketplaces, TGs, and categories.

“What makes Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards unique is that consumers are the jury and this is the only such award. So, finally, the consumer pays through their pocket and that’s what the brand wants. The way we select ads and the way we have winners is from a very scientific process that we follow.  Kantar has a tool called ‘Link’ which is a creative pre-testing tool, we have to test a lot of ads across the world. In India last year, we tested close to 1350+ ads and 360 of them actually met a threshold of the bare minimum that is required to qualify for the Creative Effectiveness Awards and from that, we have chosen eight award categories,” said Mohanty. 

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