‘Progress over perfection’: leading industry women on gender biases in the marketing industry
“I love the saying progress over perfection and you have to start somewhere. Sometimes business is harder to move, and if you waited for that moment that everything was perfect with a big bow on it, five years pass you by and really no change has been made,” said Nikki Warburton, former CMO of Audi Australia on a panel discussion at Mumbrella360 on Wednesday.
The panel followed a presentation from Phillipa Roberts, co-founder of PLH Research and co-author of ‘Brandsplaining’, who joined the session virtually to unpack data-led analysis of the good, the bad and the downright ugly of marketing to women.
Philippa Roberts joined the first part of the session virtually
One of Robert’s core messages was that brands need to stop telling women to change or fix themselves, highlighting the marketing industry’s responsibility for pushing the “good girl narrative” – selling the blonde, skinny, smiley woman as the ideal.
Following the presentation, Warburton took the stage alongside industry heavyweights Susan Coghill, CMO of Tourism Australia, Belle Taylor, senior marketing manager at Spotify AUNZ and panel moderator Christina Aventi, chief strategy officer at BMF.
Warburton noted that despite there still being a gap, there had been lots of progress in the Australian marketing industry, reinforcing that the key to continuing to progress was just making an effort – even if it wasn’t perfect.
“I think there is a gap, yes the gap is not good, but in this digital age people do more and more research online and they’ll call you out if you’re not walking the talk. It’s important to minimise that gap but you’ve got to start somewhere and I’m a big believer in if you get your brand strategy and your comms right, that can really help set the tone for the change that needs to happen,” said Warburton.
She noted that across her career she had founded it more difficult to make progress in legacy businesses in traditional categories like automotive, financial services and even agency land, with rigid global strategy leaving little wriggle room for radical change locally.
Speaking to Coghill, Aventi noted that the world of tourism marketing in Australia has traditionally relied on archetype of the male Aussie larrikin and the dated narrative of women in bikinis, and men with a beer in hand.
Speaking on how Tourism Australia is shifting this narrative, Coghill said: “If I look at the body of work we’ve had in recent years, we’ve tried to inject a lot more of the Australia personality, and yes still grab onto some of that Larrikin spirit, or some of that carefree lifestyle, but do it in a new and different way.”
She explains that the original concept for the famous Tourism Australia Super Bowl commercial that starred Chris Hemsworth as the son of Crocodile Dundee, explaining they had originally hoped to cast Margot Robbie as the protagonist, as the daughter of Dundee, however it hadn’t worked out due to scheduling issues.
“We want to make sure that we are continuing to push the envelope, that we are representing modern Australia and not falling back into the old clichés,” said Coghill.
With a more critical lens, Taylor discussed the way in which algorithms have evolved, reflecting and reinforcing human gender biases in the online world.
However, she reflects on this as an opportunity to do better: “There’s a perspective I really love that leaders in the STEM community have espoused; what an amazing opportunity it is right now to actually be able to see in large the societal biases that have existed in an anonymous unidentifiable way for decades.”
“So, we have the opportunity but with that we also have the responsibility to address it, identify it and do something about it.”
Taylor gives an example at Spotify, where the streaming consumption of female artists was low – particularly given there is a much larger number of male artists on the platform in the first place due to music industry wide gender biases . To help correct this, Spotify increased the number of female artists in its recommendation engine program and putting the spotlight on them.
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topics
Audi Australia
Belle Taylor
BMF
Christina Aventi
Nikki Warburton
Phillipa Roberts
PLH Research
Spotify
susan coghill
Tourism Australia
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