Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

How a gender strategy can improve your marketing

Article • Amy Fridlund, WARC Best Practice, November 2017

Provides advice for marketers on how to better meet the needs of different genders and highlights the potential problems for brands with gender issues.

New partnerships fuel P&G’s efforts to transform advertising

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, Cannes Lions, June 2019

Procter & Gamble, the consumer goods giant, is using a new breed of partnerships to help it transform advertising in compelling ways.

Unilever aims to remove stereotypes from its marketing DNA

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, Cannes Lions, June 2019

Unilever, the consumer goods giant, undertook an innovative experiment in a bid to help its marketers and agencies reduce their use of stereotypes.

Mars’s strategy to achieve gender equality in advertising

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, Cannes Lions, June 2019

Mars, the food manufacturer, is taking various steps as it seeks to achieve true gender equality in its advertising.

I can wear pink AND play football

News • 20 June 2019

Gen Alpha girls have a post-stereotype mindset, according to new research into under-10s which claims that this age group is one that judges people by who they are, not what they are.

Mars makes the case for responsible marketing

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, Cannes Lions, June 2019

Mars, the confectionery giant, has a commitment to responsible marketing that helps steer its communications activity in various ways.

Unilever tackles the motes in its marketers' eyes

News • 18 June 2019

FMCG giant Unilever has turned its gaze inwards as part of its ongoing campaign against stereotyping, with an exercise designed to jolt its top marketers into greater awareness of unwitting stereotyping and ‘Unstereotype Bootcamps’ to ...

Embracing the power of ‘counter-stereotypical narratives’

Opinion • Stephen Whiteside, April 2019

Rejecting outmoded stereotypes is becoming table stakes for advertisers. At a recent conference, Stephen Whiteside from WARC learned that flipping them may be even more powerful.

Asia's marketers need to look beyond stereotypes

News • 19 April 2019

Marketers are often guilty of a tendency to “segment everything into little boxes”, but consumers rarely fit neatly into their assigned roles and it can be easy to miss the subtle changes that are taking place across demographics.

The perennials: The future of ageing

Article • Research on WARC, April 2019

Looks at our ageing societies and the challenges and opportunities they face as ageing generations are having larger effects on populations around the world.

Asia's marketers need to address ad stereotypes

News • 05 April 2019

Brands in Asia need to consider carefully how they represent gender in advertising as traditional stereotypes are increasingly problematic – and can be bad for business – says a regional strategy director.

Brands struggle with female empowerment in Asia

News • 02 April 2019

Brands are increasingly getting behind female empowerment but they aren’t getting it quite right in APAC, where cultural norms are often different and the landscape is changing fast, according to the head of a cultural insights firm.

ANA urges brands to join SeeHer movement

Opinion • Stephen Whiteside, April 2019

Boosting the accurate portrayal of girls and women in ads and media is the main goal of the SeeHer initiative.

Navigating gender within brand purpose in Asia

Article • Low Lai Chow, Event Reports, How To Speak Woman: The Asia Edition, March 2019

Brands in Asia need to carefully consider how they represent gender in advertising as traditional stereotypes are increasingly problematic.

How brands can meet the cultural expectations of women in Asia

Article • Low Lai Chow, Event Reports, How To Speak Woman: The Asia Edition, March 2019

It is increasingly necessary for brands in Asia to address gender issues, but it’s not easy to get it right.

Why global brands fall into the gap of meaning

Article • Dr. Martina Olbertova, Research on WARC, March 2019

Discusses how global brands should be aware of the mental disconnects that can occur between the meaning intended to be communicated by a brand versus meaning created.

AI finds that brands lack gender balance on social. It's time to do something about it

Opinion • Jenny Barthe, March 2019

A recent project by the agency We Are Social used an AI to scrape brand profiles on Instagram found evidence that brands are still making damaging assumptions about who their decision-making audiences are and how they're talking to them.

How Diageo corrects gender assumptions

Article • Sam Peña-Taylor, Event Reports, MRS Impact, March 2019

When brands depict society, it is important that they think about who is doing the watching and who controls the action – an example from Diageo shows how to do this.

Pritchard makes plea for gender equality in ads

News • 08 March 2019

Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer has called on companies and brands to commit to a “100% accurate portrayal of women and girls in advertising and media”, but a couple of recent studies suggest there is some way go to ...

P&G’s Pritchard cites equality, sustainability and tech as the future of brands

Article • Anil Thakraney, Event Reports, IAA World Congress, February 2019

P&G’s Chief Brand Officer, Marc Pritchard, believes that a focus on equality, sustainability and technology will drive the future of purpose-driven brands.

Bridging the diversity disconnect: Charting more inclusive pathways to growth

Article • Elliot Lum, Research on WARC, February 2019

Explores a study, which identifies the unique issues that diversity stakeholders face from the perspectives of academia, industry and emerging talent.

Fashion retailers need to play catch-up on sizing

News • 14 February 2019

Inclusive sizing for women is gaining traction in the world of fashion, and retailers who fail to respond to the trend risk going the way of the ark, industry observers say.

What we know about marketing to men

Article • WARC Best Practice, February 2019

Explores how the roles of modern men in society are changing and advises on how marketers should respond to this behavioural change in order to effectively advertise to men, particularly across different cultures and at a time of social change.

What we know about marketing to women

Article • WARC Best Practice, February 2019

Looks at how women's roles in society have changed and continue to evolve, meaning brands have had to adopt how they engage this audience, by promoting female empowerment, removing gender bias and ensuring women are part of the client and agency teams.

Brands and consumers at odds on gender stereotyping

News • 29 January 2019

The vast majority of marketers reckon they’re doing well when it comes to avoiding gender stereotyping, yet almost half of consumers say advertisers are still not getting it right.

Ethics and Regulation