@marketingmag
THE TRUTH ISSUECreative process changes
Marketers can take hold of
the creative process and stop
unconscious bias seeping out to
the customer, damaging the brand
and limiting performance with a few
practical things to remember:- Past data doesn’t make
it right
Let’s look at customer segments
with totally fresh eyes. Let’s put
aside old data and insights that
have had gender bias ingrained
in them. If we all looked at past
successes as the measure of
whether or not we’re on track,
then we could be missing out on
opportunity. Like Axe, all brands
need to ask ‘what is the opportunity
above current successes?’ - Don’t cut and paste
your briefs
Marketers who are cutting and
pasting their agency briefs and
passing on outdated research
insights or customer profi les created
with on-board bias need to take
stock and rethink. Ask if the agency
is doing the same. - Let go of demographics
Are we putting people in boxes by
their demographics when really
an attitudinal approach may be
better? Can we focus on customer
needs, cares and values rather than
their age, gender or even income?
(Note that our income is not always
an indication of our propensity to
spend, as many on autopilot may
believe!)- Widely distribute your
insights
Are your customer insights getting
right through to the production
team? In the case of the recent
Holden Acadia campaign, with
male domination at the expense
of women, we can’t be sure if the
client even turned up on set at all.
Maybe this production execution
is the issue and not the strategy or
the creative concept. What if the
girls were moved to the back during
the shoot and no one noticed or
even thought about it? Let’s make
all the creatives and producers
accountable to strategy and make
sure the marketing department turns
up to the shoot. - Gender neutral may be
the best of all
There are many cases in which a
careful gender-neutral execution can
maintain existing audiences and open
up new ones, but do many of the
creatives and marketers know what
that looks like? Marketers need to be
trained on gender bias and all forms
of unconscious bias in creative.- Align the customer profi les
with all stakeholders
Marketers need to check if the
target audience profi les from the
sales team, researcher, internal
strategy team, media agency, digital
agency, media networks and creative
agencies even align. Many of the
creative and media agencies are
using stock standard profi les based
on gender and age demographics
and are hanging onto them tightly
because they have data from the
past that they think validates their
existence. We need to ask, ‘Are we
looking at the past customer, rather
than the future customer?’ There
has to be a day when we put the old
way of doing things aside. I propose
that is now.
For those thinking, ‘That’s not
my agency, they wouldn’t do that
to me’... if this were true, then how
come so much of the work still turns
up on air with bias and prejudice
front and centre? The real question
for marketers is: do you have the
assurance and the skillset to be
certain that it won’t?
Editor's note: This article was
penned before the release of Gillette's
'Is this the best a man can get?' US
campaign, which sparked global
discussion by challenging, among other
things, the bias perpetuated in legacy
advertising campaigns.Anyone living in a privileged
position sometimes can’t see
what’s happening around them.
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