Brand Dig: Connecting brands with the protesting trend

In this blog series, we dig into the world of marketing and discuss brands, news, trends and examples that have made the digital headlines. In this week’s post, researcher Harry looks at how brands are jumping on the protest band wagon.

When an estimated 4.2 million people take part in a Women's March in the US alone, it's safe to say that the status quo is over. Fuelled by a media landscape that's brimming with both anxiety and passion around equality, immigration and the environment, people are protesting for the first time in their lives. So when writing your thoughts on a sign and marching in the streets with other likeminded people is the new normal - what is a brand's role in all this? How can brands get involved in the cultural conversation when the nature of the discussion is so divisive?

According to the folks at Saturday Night Live they shouldn't. In a sketch that blasts the advertising industry, an agency competes to work on a Cheetos campaign. The message is clear: don't align your brand with a protest unless there's a clear connection otherwise it comes across as corporate exploitation of someone else’s pain. Instead a brand like Cheetos should probably just stick with positioning itself as a fun kids’ snack.

So how are other brands weaving protests into their campaigns?

An app that monitors ‘manterrupting’ at work

Even if they haven’t experienced it, most women have seen it. When a man interrupts or talks over a woman without letting them get a word in. You see it at work, at home and on TV panel shows. It’s definitely a thing. So what’s the solution? You could start by understanding that it’s firmly embedded in most cultures and that awareness, education and behaviour change amongst men is more likely to create meaningful results. Or you could create an app. And a Brazilian creative agency has gone with the latter.

Launched to coincide with International Women’s Day, “Woman Interrupted” is a smartphone app that analyses conversations to decipher how often men interrupt women. So the user downloads the app, teaches it to recognise her voice, and then records her conversations with men to determine how often her voice is cut off mid-sentence by a male voice. It even generates graphic reports that you can share on social media.

So while the app might draw some attention to the problem – is it really going to change men’s behaviour?

P&G challenges gender stereotypes

From the movies we watch to the adverts on TV, most media we consume has some form of stereotype that supposedly makes it relatable. But what if the gender tropes on the screen aren’t really grounded in the real world, but an imagined reality that’s increasingly out of touch? That’s the thinking behind P&G’s #WeSeeEqual campaign which promotes gender equality in its adverts for International Women’s Day.

The advert features a mash-up of clips from previous campaigns that each defies a gender stereotype with captions like “tears don’t care who cry them”, “diapers don’t care who change them” and “households don’t care who head them”. But as the advert isn’t supported by any meaningful action, it certainly has all the hallmarks of a brand promoting a faux-activism. P&G’s brands like Ariel and Fairy – which have run ads on gender equality ­in the past – have a somewhat tenuous connection to gender equality. But the lack of relevance to the brand can always be made up by a real initiative behind the creative. Just look at the initiative to end girl-to-girl bullying from P&G’s Secret deodorant.

Ikea is providing a meaningful opportunity to female refugees

The Syrian refugee crisis is just as tragic for the way it shows the lack of humanity among some western governments, as it is for knowing just how many people have been displaced from their homes.  For instance, since 2011, Jordan has accepted over 655,000 refugees – but many of them cannot find work. So Ikea has decided to step in and contribute in its own small way.

An inexpensive flat-pack furniture brand ostensibly has just as much relevance to Syrian refugees as Cheetos might have to immigrants. But unlike SNL’s joke Cheetos campaign, there’s both a real connection and action behind Ikea’s initiative. The Swedish company has said in 2019 it will start selling a line of rugs and textiles made by Syrian refugees living in Jordan – most of whom are women.

Demonstrating that Ikea isn’t just jumping on the anti-Trump bandwagon for the sake of publicity, the project actually pre-dates the President’s Syrian refugee ban. And with the initiative expected to create jobs for around 200 refugees, Ikea has been smart to find a real connection between what it sells in its stores and people who help.

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