Andie Crawford: Brands Used To Assume Women Were “Fragile”

With more than 20 years’ of experience working in communications in the UK and Australia, Andie Crawford, general manager at Alt/Shift (Sydney) has seen rapid shifts in how brands communicate with women.

Here she speaks to B&T about them changes, as well as how even small brands can make an impact when it comes to gender equality.

1. Throughout your career have you seen a shift in how brands and companies communicate with women? If so, what are some of the key changes you have seen?

Brands formerly communicated with women and girls assuming them as the ‘fragile’ sex; women were often portrayed as if a precious delicate object and common ideas of how genders should act were played out in ad campaigns which, in turn, reinforced the gender roles that a man or a woman were expected to fulfill.

It’s no small job to undo.

Research into 2,000 Cannes Lions films from 2006-2016 found that men speak seven times the amount women do in ads. Men get four times more screen time than women. And men are 62 percent more likely to be shown as ‘smart’.

We’ve seen the UK step up in this area – in 2019, the UK’s advertising watchdog banned ads depicting people engaging in heavily gender-stereotypical activities.

While we don’t have anything like that in Australia (yet!), in recent years many brands have woken up and recognized the need to change this type of communication for a multitude of reasons – the shift in gender expectations, the more diverse nature of gender and the #MeToo movement.

With the average Aussie seeing 5,000 ads a day, we can’t underestimate the power our industry has to influence cultural norms in society more broadly.

2. Did the #MeToo movement impact female-focused communications?

Without a doubt the #MeToo Movement impacted communications because it highlighted public awareness of sexual harassment and assault. It has made the world sit up and take notice of how women have been treated and, without a doubt, language around women contributed to a certain assumption of them and their role which is arguably wrong. Changing language around women and girls to empower rather than fragilizing them is a step in the right direction.

As comms professionals, we have the opportunity to reframe inherently biased language around whatever the gender and gender diversity itself means that we have a responsibility to address this and challenge it. The #MeToo movement, together with renowned books on the subject have revealed this epidemic of gendered violence but what I would say is that it needs to be spoken about in a less clumsy and harmful way. Brands can be as good as they can be in their outgoing communications but at the end of the day, the current environment of under-resourced newsrooms, rapid churn and the 24 hour news cycle means that editorial can be outdated and use the passive, blaming voice that does women no favours.

We still have a long way to go, but luckily we have wonderful organisations such as shEqual pushing the industry to be better. Just last year, they published research of seven archetyped portrayals of women, for advertising professionals to avoid using. It’s data-led insights like this that help to support progressive portrayals of women and drive our industry forward.

3. What are some of the smartest female-focused campaigns you’ve witnessed?

There is a small Melbourne workwear brand, SUK Workwear, who created a low-fi content campaign for Mothers’ Day centred around real, raw stories of motherhood, in an unfiltered and natural way. From miscarriage to mother’s guilt and everything in-between, it touched on diverse experiences of motherhood, without playing into stereotypes. I loved it, because it goes to show that even small brands can have an impact, and can create communications that portray true representation and in my experience as a mum to three girls this authenticity resonates. Campaigns need to be brave, they also need to push even further and go beyond female-focused campaigns and into intersectional communications.

I guess the upshot is that what I want to see, what I want my daughters and my colleagues (male, female, gender-diverse) to see is each and every gender owning and being responsible for their own story and I am hopeful that in our work with brands we can pave the way for that.

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