Driving Impact through Inclusive Advertising: An Examination of Award-Winning Gender-Inclusive Advertising

Abstract

Utilizing a qualitative thematic analysis of submission materials for 18 award-winning, gender-inclusive campaigns at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, this research reenvisions inclusive advertising with a strengthened focus on impact. While existing literature has largely focused on identity categories and inclusive representation, we identify four mechanisms for impact (perceptual, conceptual, instrumental, and political) and scalability (across micro, meso, and macro levels) as salient themes in the award-winning and shortlisted campaigns that are recognized by the industry as gender inclusive. Theoretical and managerial contributions include (1) identification of how social impact is conceptualized in award-winning inclusive advertising and how impact functions through awards, (2) development in the definition of inclusive advertising to include social impacts as an outcome, and (3) a reimagining and expansion of the concept of inclusive advertising through a proposed Inclusive Advertising Spectrum, which encompasses representation, storytelling, and social impacts.

Momentum toward equitable, diverse, and inclusive (EDI) advertising has recently accelerated, as evidenced by the actions of regulatory bodies, industry associations, institutional alliances, and activists to address important issues such as gender inclusivity. The creation of awards to acknowledge inclusive advertising offers further evidence of the attention and value of this work within the industry. Advertising regulatory bodies are providing guidance for advertisers on how to create progressive and inclusive portrayals and avoid harmful depictions, such as the leading efforts by the Advertising Standards Authority on gender stereotypes, sexualization, and objectification in the United Kingdom (Antoniou and Akrivos 2020). Concurrently, advertising associations, such as the American Advertising Federation (AAF), have created a range of EDI initiatives, including a tool kit to promote fair and balanced advertising depictions of Black women alongside resources to understand and support #BlackLivesMatter in advertising. Various alliances between the advertising and marketing industries have also formed to take a stand on promoting inclusive representations and authentic stories in advertising, such as the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing and its #SeeAll initiatives (Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing n.d.), which promote diversity in advertising relating to depictions of race, abilities, and sexualities, as well as the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) #SeeHer initiative (If You Can See Her, You Can Be Her n.d.) to promote accurate representations of women and girls in advertising. Activism on EDI in advertising has emerged from within the industry itself (e.g., Time’s Up/Advertising and Creative Equals) as well as across social media activity and organizing by consumers (Lambiase and Bronstein 2020; McCarthy and Glozer 2022; Middleton and Turnbull 2021). Finally, various awards have been introduced to showcase inclusive advertising efforts. Examples range from the Glass: The Lion for Change Award, introduced in 2015, for campaigns addressing gender inequality or prejudice, to The One Show’s Fusion Pencil (The One Show n.d.), celebrating EDI in staffing and content, as well as their newly announced Cultural Driver award category, which recognizes impact on multicultural markets within a cultural mainstream.

Collectively, such efforts highlight an industry stance that takes responsibility for advertising’s cultural power to shape and reinforce societal attitudes and behaviors that may marginalize or exclude certain groups of people. Because the advertising industry has long been criticized for its portrayals of gender, we find gender inclusivity to be an especially important issue in the domain of inclusive advertising (Eisend 2019; Eisend and Rößner 2022). Yet while an ongoing stream of interdisciplinary academic research over the recent decades has considered how different identities are (mis)represented in advertising, as per the call of this special issue, research is still needed that provides “theoretical and strategic insights on advertising inclusivity, or lack thereof, to understand the social and cultural impacts of advertising”. In this vein, some scholars have noted an emerging “fourth sector” focused on purpose-driven, social impact work within the advertising and communications landscape (LaVoi and Haley 2021). In this article, we build on the existing conversation on inclusive advertising to explore what advertising is recognized by the industry as inclusive and ask the following: (1) How can the impact(s) of inclusive advertising be conceptualized? (2) How can this conceptualization of impact(s) inform reimagined understandings of inclusive advertising? We pose these research questions in particular to consider how creativity and gender-inclusive advertising can be harnessed to drive impact and social change. In line with this focus on outcomes, we identify scale (micro, meso, and macro level) and mechanisms (perceptual, conceptual, instrumental, and political) for impact to provide insights on factors of effectiveness for inclusive advertising campaigns, using industry awards as a proxy for one measure of effectiveness. Through this contribution, we advocate for a reimagination and reconceptualization of inclusive advertising to incorporate social impact as an outcome, contributing an outcome-oriented agenda to increase the societal benefits of research on inclusive advertising.

To do this, we first overview the literature on diversity and inclusion in advertising, highlighting how, to date, inclusive advertising efforts have focused on addressing (mis)representation as opposed to broader consideration of how social impact operates through inclusive advertising. We also consider an emerging body of work which explores how authentic and diverse stories can be used as tools for inclusion. Next, we describe our methodology, a qualitative thematic analysis of 18 distinct campaigns that were awarded (Grand Prix, Gold, Silver, Bronze) or shortlisted for two Cannes Lions Awards for Good in 2022. Advertising awards are used to recognize the best work in the industry across a range of measures, and they offer an opportunity for talent and agencies alike to promote themselves to future employers, employees, and clients and for ideas and strategies to be validated (Gralpois 2022; Tungate 2018). As such, advertising awards may serve as benchmarks for what is currently valued and for future directions of the industry (Galmés, Berlanga, and Victoria 2016). We then present findings from our analysis, elaborating on the mechanisms (perceptual, conceptual, instrumental, and political) and scalability (micro, meso, and macro level) of impacts. Finally, we outline theoretical contributions and practical implications arising from our article, proposing an Inclusive Advertising Spectrum along which to identify opportunities for amplifying inclusivity in advertising and drive consumer, societal, and institutional well-being across the advertising ecosystem.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Advertising

Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren (2023) observe that advertising research has examined diversity and inclusion topics for more than 50 years, defining diversity in advertising as referring to the portrayal of people across a spectrum of distinct attributes (e.g., race, gender, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ability), while inclusion refers to the valuation of their presence and perspectives in advertising. Diverse representations in advertising play a crucial role in contributing to a more representative and inclusive society (Lee, Williams, and La Ferle 2004). Scholarship on diversity and inclusion in advertising broadly concludes that advertising is neither inclusive nor representative of the diversity of people across societies, yet this body of research lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach for interrogating these issues (Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren 2023). Key topics focus on representations of particular identity categories, namely, gender, race, age, sexuality, and ability (Chu 2022; Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren 2023; Grau and Zotos 2016; Haller and Ralph 2001; Nölke 2018), with some emerging work taking a more intersectional approach (Gopaldas and DeRoy 2015). Yet some identity categories remain underexplored, including gender and sexuality, religion, nontraditional family structure, class, and non-Western contexts of identity (Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren 2023; Eisend and Rößner 2022; Rößner, Gvili, and Eisend 2021; Van-Tien Dao et al. 2014). Overall, the focus of this work examines how different identity categories are (mis)represented in advertising. This offers important insights as to how representational conventions influence who is depicted in marketing communications and how such representations invoke and structure identities, in turn raising awareness of the ethical relationship between marketing representations and identity (Schroeder and Borgerson 2005).

Within this body of work, researchers have considered how advertising perpetuates inequalities for different groups and individuals in society, particularly through the (re)production of stereotypes—or generalized beliefs about people who share certain characteristics that may inform expectations about the group—which, in turn, have the potential to restrict opportunities. For example, scholars observe that, historically, women have been represented submissively or decoratively in advertising and are overrepresented in domestic and family contexts, and that such representations propagate gendered inequalities (Grau and Zotos 2016). Other gender scholarship has highlighted how men employ various strategies, including resistance to and delegitimization of entrenched and institutionalized gender ideals in advertising (Zayer, McGrath, and Castro-González 2020). Roles are often used to describe the same phenomenon as stereotypes in advertising, namely, beliefs that certain attributes differentiate social groups (e.g., men and women) (Eisend 2019). Appropriation is another key issue, such as advertisers using Blackness through promotional strategies that draw upon both people and symbolic and material representations socially and historically constructed as Black (e.g., speech and phonetic conventions, folklore, style, fashion, music, usage of the body, and the Black physical form) to make claims about the presumed viewer or the product’s role as a cultural resource that aids in lifestyle projects (Crockett 2008). Appropriation can also involve advertisers hijacking social justice movements for profit, such as in the case of rainbow-washing, where queer and pride movements, as symbolized by the rainbow flag, are used to vaguely or misleadingly portray a company’s stance and support for the LGBTQIA + community, leading to (financial) exploitation and deception of customers (Wulf et al. 2022). Hence, concepts such as roles, stereotypes, and appropriation highlight how “bad faith” operates in advertising to “other” social groups, imposing limits and fostering biased understandings of identities (Borgerson and Schroeder 2002).

In addition to the tradition of scholarship examining representation, an emerging focus of research on inclusion and advertising looks at representation and storytelling and considers authentic and diverse stories as tools for inclusion (e.g., Rezvani and Gordon 2021). Due to their persuasive potential in yielding changes in beliefs, attitudes, and intentions, stories—or narratives organized by certain structural elements—have become integral components of brand strategies, often expressed in advertising campaigns and brand communication (e.g., Aaker and Aaker 2016; Gurzki, Schlatter, and Woisetschläger 2019; Kang, Hong, and Hubbard 2020; van Laer et al. 2014; van Laer and de Ruyter 2010) or in cultural and consumer narratives that use brands to convey meaning (Cooper, Schembri, and Miller 2010; Hirschman 2010; Woodside, Sood, and Miller 2008). Van Laer et al. (2014) define stories as “a storyteller’s production and narrative as a story receiver’s consumption,” highlighting the ways in which “stories constitute a powerful device to frame a storyteller’s experience” and the receiver’s active “authoring” in processing the story (799). More recent developments in EDI initiatives have begun to foreground questions of whose stories and what diversity of lived experiences are told and heard. Just as a lack of diverse representations may impose limits and foster biased understandings of diverse identities and experiences, so too can single stories (Adichie 2009). Accordingly, research has begun to highlight that storytelling with an inclusion agenda can foster the dialogue needed to promote societal changes. For example, gender-themed empowerment ads that involve both male and female perspectives and experiences can break down gender stereotypes and highlight inequalities in authentic ways (Tsai, Shata, and Tian 2021). Similarly, narratives can shape how people with different abilities are understood; however, they must align with and accommodate their lived experiences to be truly inclusive (Kearney, Brittain, and Kipnis 2019). Hence, to drive inclusion through storytelling in advertising, narratives must be authentic and expose the realities that give rise to exclusion.

Spanning conversations about representation and storytelling are questions about how the lack of diversity and inclusion in advertising can be challenged. To do so, advertisers might place an ethical lens on the appropriateness of portrayals, considering how identity is represented and attending to issues of underrepresentation, exclusion, and bias (Schroeder and Borgerson 2005). Yet a lack of diversity in creative teams in advertising agencies hinders advertising’s ability to reflect diversity in society more broadly (Thompson-Whiteside, Turnbull, and Howe-Walsh 2021). Opportunities in new media through collaborations with diverse influencers present one way of promoting greater inclusion in advertising that offers more perceived credibility for audiences (Li 2022). However, recent research has identified that transformative outcomes in advertising require a broader understanding of the complexities within the advertising ecosystem (Zayer and Coleman 2015), revealed in the intersections and interactions between institutional actors at the micro level, advertising institutions at the meso level, and sociocultural forces at the macro level (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022). Marketers have also been identified as needing to play a role, increasingly through brands taking a stand on sociopolitical issues in authentic ways, through brand activism (Vredenburg et al. 2020). However, the issue of woke-washing—where brands market themselves as concerned with social justice issues but do not take meaningful or sustained action to align with this—is an increasingly pervasive problem (Sobande 2019). Research on this topic highlights that the mere inclusion of structurally marginalized identities in advertising is not enough. Indeed, a sense of belonging can remain precarious and marked by cultural anxieties (Boulton 2016). This raises two questions: Beyond the issue of how different identities are represented and their stories told in advertising, how does social change operate through inclusive advertising? And how can extant conceptualizations of inclusive advertising be broadened to add a more outcome-oriented approach to inclusion in advertising?

Advertising, Social Impact, and Gender Equality

The social effects of advertising have long been established as an important scholarly topic (Pollay 1986), yet a study of 30 years of advertising research found that less than 1% of research in advertising and marketing/communication journals has examined social effects (Kim et al. 2014). Where scholarship on the social effects of advertising does exist, it tends to focus on negative societal impacts such as materialism and poor esteem (Dahlen 2021). Accordingly, scholars have highlighted the need for a better understanding of the positive social effects of advertising that have the potential to enhance consumers’ well-being (Dahlen and Rosengren 2016). To do this, scholars have been tasked with broadening extant paradigms of advertising research to better consider and assess “social impact” (LaVoi and Haley 2021).

But what is impact and how has it been conceptualized in the prior advertising and marketing scholarship? Past studies have examined social impact through various lenses. One research tradition that has examined impact is transformative consumer research (TCR). Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman (2022) translate the TCR movement to advertising, in particular, through the conceptualization of transformative advertising research (TAR), or “research focused on well-being outcomes for individuals, institutions, and society within the field of advertising,” and scholarship which “illuminates the ecosystem in which advertising operates and problems arise” (6). That is, they illuminate micro, meso, and macro levels of well-being and sites for potential transformation.

Davis and Ozanne (2019) note that “no clear best practices exist” in what constitutes impact. In this vein, Ozanne et al. (2017) advocate for a relational engagement approach that aims to include various academic and nonacademic stakeholders (such as practitioners) in the research process and the process of knowledge transfer to maximize impact. Specifically, Ozanne et al. (2017) suggest that “researchers employing relational engagement approaches work more directly with the external constituency they hope to serve” (2). The authors further outline different meanings of impact ranging from a knowledge product (e.g., books, decision-making tools) to awareness of research findings (e.g., through media) to use of the knowledge product (e.g., adoption by policymakers or industry) and, finally, societal benefits, or “an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life” (2). Beyond the types of impact, the scale of impact has likewise been considered, with Nardini et al. (2022) discussing the scaling of impact in terms of going deep and wide. In advertising scholarship specifically, it has been suggested that social impact practices “exist on a spectrum” within the advertising and communications landscape (LaVoi and Haley 2021, 7), highlighting an urgent need to create and understand “‘impact metrics’ alongside traditional brand metrics” (11).

Yet academics may be falling behind in incorporating useful concepts and practices from industry into theoretically guided research, particularly in how the impact of inclusive advertising is conceptualized. Notably, we observe an overreliance in the past literature on conceptualizing inclusive advertising as centered on representation of different identity categories rather than more intersectional, intentional, and outcome-oriented impacts. Having been called to task for decades over possible negative social effects of representation in advertising and faced with consumers who expect advertisers to be more proactive in advancing positive social goals, such as inclusivity (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022), the advertising industry has increasingly turned attention toward building relationships with these consumers with social impact strategies (Sidibe 2020).

One crucial focus of such efforts has been advancing gender equality, with the advertising industry increasingly shaped by “gender-progressive logics” that have been driven through supportive public discourses, shifts in professionals’ moral conscience, voiced consumer opinions, commercially successful trailblazing, and gender-progressive advertising campaigns (Middleton and Turnbull 2021). Such a shift is significant for an industry that has long been plagued by gender imbalances and hostilities within agencies that, in turn, hinder advertising’s ability to reflect diversity in society, including more gender-inclusive representations (Thompson-Whiteside, Turnbull, and Howe-Walsh 2021). Indeed, sexism in advertising is now recognized as a global issue to be addressed (Gurrieri and Hoffman 2019), with various industry-backed groups and activist movements forming in response, including #SeeHer (ANA 2022), Les Lionnes and Creative Equals (Thompson-Whiteside and Turnbull 2021), and the Unstereotype Alliance (UN Women 2021). Another important development has been in advertising industry awards, where social change is increasingly rewarded with regard to creativity. Indeed, specific and prestigious awards related to advancing gender equality through advertising now exist—although critics have raised the question of whether such efforts simply represent “fempower-washing” and fail to support women with an institutionalized approach to gender equality (Sterbenk et al. 2022).

Bringing these ideas together, we take an expansionist view (Truong et al. 2021) and look at how two organizational fields in advertising—research and practice (see Kipnis et al. 2021)—can inform each other to maximize impact related to inclusive advertising. Specifically, we turn to advertising awards as a proxy for what is currently legitimized in relation to social change efforts advancing gender equality through advertising and as a benchmark for future directions in the advertising industry pertaining to inclusivity. For industry, awards provide crucial barometer insights into forward-thinking practice, such as social impact. This is reflected in a recent report (The Cannes Lions 2022 Official Wrap-up Report 2022) through the words of Kimberlee Wells, chief executive officer (CEO) of TBWA/Melbourne and Adelaide jury president of the SDG Lions, who stated, “We are looking at real world impact. . . . We set out to determine that the entry was not a moment to have a conversation but to inspire long-term change.” Awards have long been noted in advertising scholarship as crucial to success and legitimacy within the industry, with an award-winning ad signaling a credible external validity of creativity (West, Koslow, and Kilgour 2019) and agency performance (Helgesen 1994; Tippins and Kunkel 2006), despite the potential for originality and judging biases (Kilgour, Sasser, and Koslow 2013; West, Caruana, and Leelapanyalert 2013). Accordingly, analyzing award-winning advertising campaigns is well established in advertising research to interrogate contemporary industry practice (Chen and Taylor 2012; Choi et al. 2018; Qiao and Griffin 2016). To bring together and explore the ideas outlined in this section, we ask the following research questions: How can the impacts of award-winning, inclusive advertising be conceptualized? And how can this conceptualization of impacts inform reimagined understandings of inclusive advertising?

Method

To answer these research questions, the researchers analyzed advertising campaigns celebrated through two of the 2022 Cannes Lions Awards for Good (Cannes Lions 2023a)—Glass: The Lion for Change (hereafter, Glass Lion) and Sustainable Development Goal 5, People: Gender Equality (hereafter, SDG5 Lion)—using these prestigious awards as a proxy for what the industry deems as some of the best campaigns in the industry. Originally held in Venice in 1954, the Cannes Lions was inspired by the International Film Festival held in Cannes and the Lion of Piazza San Marco in Venice. While its intent was to bring the same attention to creators of commercials as those who work in film, it was not until 1992 that the nomenclature reflected the festival as an International Advertising Festival to recognize that advertising is more multifaceted than cinematic production alone; almost two decades later, in 2011, the name was changed to the International Festival of Creativity to reflect creativity across all communication forms (Best Media Info Bureau 2022). In 2010, the Grand Prix for Good was introduced to allow room for entries for charities or public service; and, in 2015, the Glass Lion: The Lion for Change was introduced to award work that “implicitly or explicitly addresses issues of gender inequality or prejudice, through the conscious representation of gender in advertising” (Cannes Lions 2023a). The award recognizes ideas that aim “to positively impact ingrained gender inequality, imbalance or injustice, and should illustrate how that work tackles, highlights or redresses issues of gender representation” (Cannes Lions 2023a). In 2018, the festival added the Sustainable Development Goals Lions, which focus on problem solving and creativity areas that “seek to positively impact the world” (Cannes Lions 2023b). Entrants for this award must demonstrate how they are advancing the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development across people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships” (United Nations 2023), with the greatest judging weight going to impact and results (40%), in addition to idea (20%), strategy (20%), and execution (20%). Indeed, the Cannes Lions are widely considered “the advertising and creative marketing industry’s top international awards” (Holdsworth 2022).

To ground our understanding and further immerse ourselves in the context, archival data were collected and analyzed. Specifically, 50-plus industry articles related to the shortlisted and winning campaigns for the three categories listed, as well as general articles about the Cannes awards winners, were compiled and reviewed. The search was conducted on the widely used Factiva database for business research using keywords related to the name of the campaign, the company/firm associated, and the award (e.g., Data Tienda; Data Tienda WeCapital; Data Tienda Campaign; Data Tienda Cannes Glass Lion), as well as phrases related to the awards (e.g., 2022 Cannes Glass Lions Winners). By reviewing the industry and press reports, we were able to gain a more granular understanding of the campaigns and the conversations surrounding the Cannes awards more generally.

Next, we looked to the submission materials for the Cannes awarded and shortlisted campaigns to further examine the constructs of impact in gender-inclusive advertising. Entrants for the Cannes Lions Festival are required to submit campaign materials, including campaign ads and unmodified (i.e., exactly as publicly released) collateral, success metrics (e.g., results and outcomes), and entrant narratives. The Awards for Good narratives require entrants to address the following criteria: (1) the problem the campaign addresses, (2) the sociopolitical/cultural context surrounding the campaign, (3) the big idea of the campaign, (4) the strategy and execution driving the campaign, and (5) the resulting impacts (see Supplemental Online Table 2). Thus, these submission materials provided rich data on the goals, strategies, tactics, and outcomes of each campaign.

To understand how impact is conveyed in advertising awarded for its gender inclusivity, we analyzed two award categories—the Glass Lion and the SDG5 Lion—because they were most closely aligned with gender-inclusive advertising. A total of 18 distinct campaigns that were awarded (Grand Prix, Gold, Silver, Bronze) or shortlisted for Glass Lions and SDG5 Lions in 2022 were analyzed. Six of the campaigns were shortlisted in the Sustainable Development Goals 5: Gender Equality category, with 3 winners, and 15 campaigns were shortlisted in the Glass Lion for Change category, with 8 winners. Some campaigns were shortlisted and/or were winners in more than one category. Researchers gained exclusive access to the campaigns through the Cannes award platform called lovethework.com. Among the resources, the platform offers a database of the Cannes award winners and shortlisted submissions.

In addition, the agency, country, and executives listed in the credits section (by genders) were gathered and analyzed for the winning campaigns for purposes of illustration. Large agencies were well represented in the sample, including DDB, YMLY&R, Grey, Ogilvy, and McCann, across countries such as India, Brazil, Canada, the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Romania, Peru, Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, and Panama. The list of executives compiled included roles such as president, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief creative officer, creative, art or strategy director, executive producer and producer, and account or brand manager, among others. Individuals listed in the credits as actors or writers were not included. One campaign, DojaCode, did not list any executives in the credits, so it was not included in the gender analysis. The genders of the executives were determined through a LinkedIn search of all executives to find their use of pronouns. Pronouns used in popular press articles supplemented this method. Of the 135 executives across the nine winning campaigns, gender could not be determined for three of the individuals. Across the executives listed for the campaigns, 37.6% were female, 59.4% were male, and none were identified as nonbinary. This highlights the continuing problem of a lagging percentage of women executives working on award-winning campaigns (Mallia and Windels 2018), as well as a lack of nonbinary individuals.

A hallmark of qualitative research is that it can afford an in-depth, holistic perspective on phenomena. In this spirit, three researchers inductively analyzed all entry kit submission materials for the awarded and shortlisted 2022 campaigns, using qualitative thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2021; Schreier 2012), which through the coding of data “develops ideas, meanings and understandings” of “patterns” and nuances to identify themes and formulate explanations (Ozuem, Willis, and Howell 2022, 144–145). Qualitative thematic analysis has been used in advertising (Gurzki, Schlatter, and Woisetschläger 2019; Roberts and Pettigrew 2007), marketing, communication, and psychology (Ben Youssef, Leicht, and Marongiu 2019; Braun and Clarke 2021; Buehler 2017; Duffy 2013; Mehraliyev, Chan, and Kirilenko 2022); it entails continuous refinement of themes for “theory development and the creation of meaning” (Williams and Moser 2019, 54). First, the researchers sought to understand conceptually what the advertising industry is awarding as gender inclusive. That is, the researchers independently immersed themselves in the data, examining and taking extensive notes on all visual and narrative award submission documents through a process of open coding, an analytically “generative” approach whereby researchers “open up the data to all potentials” (Corbin and Strauss 2008, 160; see also Schreier 2012)

The team, composed of three scholars extensively trained in qualitative research methods, next engaged in multiple rounds of coding, independently and through joint discussion (Arnold and Fischer 1994; see also Gurzki, Schlatter, and Woisetschläger 2019), following processes used in prior thematic analyses (e.g., Roberts and Pettigrew 2007). Specifically, the researchers engaged in dialectical tacking (Strauss and Corbin 1998)—in other words, moving back and forth between the data and interdisciplinary literature on EDI in advertising, social impact, and gender equality—to converge on themes illuminating the (1) mechanisms for impacts and (2) levels of impact. A final stage of thematic analysis moves beyond description to interpretation, with attention to apparent and subtle patterns, constructing meaning that answers the research questions and offers conceptual depth (Gurzki, Schlatter, and Woisetschläger 2019; Ozuem, Willis, and Howell 2022), revealing four mechanisms for impact and scalability across three levels of transformative outcomes. As the study examines characterizations of what the industry has deemed impactful through entry materials submitted on behalf of award-winning campaigns, we note that the data reflect only reported outcomes, rather than confirmed impacts, presenting limitations to the study. Next, we present our findings and insights based on the evidence across the range of evidence examined.

Findings

In our analysis of the winners and shortlisted campaigns for the Cannes Lions awards (Glass Lion and SDG5) and the associated trade articles, we find that the inclusive advertising that is awarded and recognized (i.e., legitimized) by the industry reflects a nuanced perspective on impact. Inspired by the work on impact (Ozanne et al. 2017), we find that awarded and shortlisted campaigns differ across two factors: in their mechanisms for impact—perceptual, conceptual, instrumental, political—and in the scale of the impact along micro, meso, or macro levels (see Figure 1). To further illustrate our conceptualization of impact in advertising, we provide construct definitions of inclusive advertising impacts (see Table 1), which we elaborate in the sections that follow.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework of the impacts of inclusive advertising.

Table 1. Construct definitions of inclusive advertising impacts.

Mechanism for Impact	Definition	Outcomes
Perceptual impact	Changes resulting from presentation of, exposure to, and attention given to an issue	“Traditional” measures of campaign effectiveness, including media coverage (e.g., earned), audience metrics (e.g., reach, impressions), and social engagement (e.g., likes, shares)
Conceptual impact	Changes in the ways individuals think about an issue	Creating enhanced understanding, bringing about greater visibility and/or representation of marginalized voices, and/or changing sentiments
Instrumental impact	Influencing consumer and/or organizational action toward an issue	Changes to consumer, managerial, or organizational policy and practices
Political impact	Activism and/or aiding in legislative action related to an issue	Influence of petitions and protests; changes to laws

Mechanisms for Impact

Looking across the results and outcomes reported by the Cannes award winners and those who were shortlisted in our subset, we observe four mechanisms for impact. First, some campaigns focus on traditional measures of campaign effectiveness, such as media metrics, demonstrating what we label as perceptual impact—for example, reporting indicators such as reach, engagement, impressions, and/or media coverage. Entries reported metrics ranging from impressions (e.g., the Vulva Spaceship campaign for the Wer Braucht Feminismus [“We Need Feminism”] in Germany, boasting 500 million impressions with no media budget) to engagement on social media platforms (e.g., Don’t Ever Leave Me campaign in Greece for Lacta chocolate, with 34,000 likes and 68,000 shares on YouTube), to media coverage (e.g., $10 million in earned coverage for DojaCode, Girls Who Code). This mechanism speaks to changes resulting from presentation of and attention given to an issue, such as through the campaigns mentioned, which promote awareness of gender equality in space travel, violence against women, and girls’ and women’s inclusion in computer science.

Second, some campaigns highlight conceptual mechanisms for impact, or a focus on changing the way people think about an issue. For instance, creating enhanced understanding, bringing about greater visibility and/or representation of marginalized voices, and/or changing sentiments. To illustrate, the Child Marriage Prevention Loan campaign for IPDC Finance Ltd. and the Amal Foundation shows images of young girls holding their babies as the spot highlights “1 in 3 girls in Bangladesh becomes a child bride” and details the harmful impacts this tradition holds for girls and for society (see Appendix, Figure A1a). A press article about the campaign in Bangladesh highlights the changes in perceptions that are needed: “The main reason behind underage marriages are parents in the poorer rural communities of Bangladesh areas, where most if not all, believe girl children to be a burden on their parents’ limited earnings” (Adobo Magazine 2022). According to the article, these beliefs, particularly among “daily wage workers,” were of vital importance to address in the campaign.

Third, we see evidence of instrumental impact, or efforts focused on influencing consumer, managerial, organizational, and industry policy and practices. For example, a shortlisted campaign, Beyond the Binary for Spark in New Zealand purports to “help rewrite the internet to be more gender inclusive.” The campaign illustrates the problem of limited gender identifiers and demonstrates the code-builder tool and other resources given to businesses to eliminate digital inequities for trans and nonbinary communities by allowing individuals to select their genders online (see Appendix, Figure A1b). Ultimately, the code was sent to tens of thousands of businesses, directly influencing business practices, which in turn affected consumers’ experiences online, and it still exists today as an enduring resource on the company’s website. In another example, the Adeli campaign from the brand Unipads Reusable Sanitary Pads ultimately led to 1,400-plus businesses pledging to end discrimination against women around social taboos in India, which prevented them from working in restaurants during their menstrual cycles, and 5,000 members of the National Restaurant Association changing their policies. Through these messages, the campaigns aim to influence consumer and/or organizational action toward an issue.

Finally, we observed campaigns which sought to have political impact through activism and/or aiding in legislative action. The most compelling example is the Early As Five campaign for Unilever’s Dove brand, which aims to eliminate race-based hair discrimination. Building on the insight that more than half of Black mothers state their daughters experience discrimination as young as five years old based on their hair, the campaign shows a number of scenarios (through a young girl’s voiceover) where Black girls and women are marginalized and experience discrimination at work and at school (see Appendix, Figure A1c). The brand/company cofounded a law, the Crown Act, which made it illegal to engage in discrimination based on hair in schools and work. In spring 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Crown Act, and it is now law in a number of states and municipalities. The move to enter into the realm of political change for the brand Dove is not inconsistent with the brand’s long narrative centered around purpose. This mechanism thus speaks to the potential of advertising to create political influence through petitions, protests, and changes to laws.

Campaigns often utilize multiple mechanisms for impact. For example, the Grand Prix winner for the Glass Lion award (and shortlisted for the SDG5), the Data Tienda campaign for WeCapital, tackles the problem of financial inclusion for women in Mexico, claiming, “We are retrieving credit histories to change life stories.” Created by DDB Mexico, this campaign specifically sought to provide access to microcredit for women on the road to greater financial autonomy. In a sociocultural environment where more than 80% of women have no credit history, the campaign highlights a platform created to collect data from local, small businesses on the payment behavior of women to aid them in establishing credit histories. Results include 10,000 women registered on the platform, over 2,000 microloans, and data from 50,000 small businesses. The campaign presents results we conceptualize as most squarely focused on conceptual and instrumental impacts. Regarding conceptual impact, the campaign promotes entrepreneurship and job creation and aims to restore economic autonomy, highlighting the ways in which women can be fully included in the economy and seen as viable entrepreneurs. Importantly, this campaign also brings to the fore an instrumental impact; that is, it articulates the distinct ways that business practices, including how credit risk is measured, can be changed for the greater good. Through the communication efforts of the campaign, businesses began to use the credit history platform, and 2,300-plus women were able to obtain loans from WeCapital. In an Advertising Age article on the Cannes Awards (Neff 2022a), the jury president, Colleen DeCourcy, is quoted on why the Data Tienda campaign ultimately won the Grand Prix Award: “The two things that we ended up talking about and looking at the most was to what extent creativity was used as a tool to affect the change, and then did the work spark a long-term change that can continue to grow and carry on? And the piece that was selected did exactly that.”

Looking across all campaigns in our subset, results and outcomes of campaigns presented as perceptual were common, which is not surprising as these metrics have traditionally been measures of advertising effectiveness. However, it is noteworthy that the Grand Prix winner’s focus was on conceptual and instrumental impact rather than more traditional measures. Importantly, we observe the salience of instrumental impact as a mechanism for impact, emerging in all but three of the winners and shortlisted campaigns for the Glass Lion and SDG5 Lion. That is, campaigns were rewarded for their influence on consumer, managerial, or organizational policies and practices. The least salient was political impact, likely illustrating the risks that can be associated with brands aligning with political stances (e.g., see Heil 2023).

In sum, we observe in our data four mechanisms of impact, with many campaigns demonstrating multiple impacts. This illustrates that, while creating awareness of issues of inclusion and representing inclusive images in campaigns are important to bringing about positive change in the industry, advertising professionals seem to be dialing up their efforts for impact and taking on an expanded view of inclusive advertising. Moreover, work that affects change on the ground through changes in practices is being rewarded.

Scalability

In our data of Cannes award winners and shortlisted campaigns, we also observe evidence of varied scalability in outcomes. While the broader Cannes Lions 2022 Official Wrap-Up Report (2022) notes that entries need to demonstrate scale to stand out, our analysis highlights that campaigns demonstrate impact at three levels: micro, meso, or macro levels. We draw on Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman’s (2022) transformative advertising research framework, which articulates transformative outcomes at multiple levels. At the micro level, the focus of transformation is related to “advertising and business professionals, clients, content creators, consumers, audiences, and other individuals” (546). At the meso level, the authors point to “organizations and other types of collective actors” (547). In this article, we refine this understanding to include groups and communities at the meso level. Finally, the authors conceptualize macro transformations as “broad, sociocultural forces” often resulting in the common good” (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022, 548).

To illustrate, at the micro level, the DojaCode campaign sought to address the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields; more specifically, the campaign highlighted that girls do not see themselves as coders (see Appendix, Figure A1d). To help introduce girls to coding, the campaign involved a collaboration with Gen Z music star Doja Cat to create the world’s first ever codable music video. In the first week alone, more than 150,000 users coded the video. This highlights the individual-level impacts of the campaign, namely, the extensive number of girls who learned how to code, engaged with the practice in a meaningful way, and might now feel more confident to explore computer science in the future.

As an exemplar of meso level impacts, the Signal for Help Campaign by the Canadian Women’s Foundation (Glass Lion Gold winner) helped generate awareness around domestic violence through a public service announcement (PSA), particularly during the pandemic lockdown, when individuals could not safely and privately communicate with others. The campaign shows a simple hand gesture individuals can make during a video call to signal that they are in danger (see Appendix, Figure A1e). At a meso level, the hand signal was adopted and institutionalized by more than 250 organizations and in more than 20 languages. It was further featured in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and had its own Wikipedia page created. This demonstrates the impact of the campaign across different organizations, groups, and communities.

In another example, at a macro level, the Share the Load campaign for the brand Ariel/P&G in India sought to shift mindsets and cultural norms around women and housework. Through generating widespread discussion and extensive media coverage (featured on 1,900 media outlets), the seven-year-long campaign was credited with changing men’s beliefs that laundry was a woman’s job—from 79% in 2015 to 41% in 2020, then down to 26% at the time of the most recent Cannes submission data. The campaign is touted in the trade press (Srivastava 2022) for highlighting “the inherent patriarchy in the Indian society” and is described by Josy Paul, BBDO India chairman and chief creative officer, as “not a campaign but a larger story and a ‘movement’” (see Appendix, Figure A1f). This highlights the scale of the impact at the level of broad sociocultural forces toward social change that results in the common good.

Moreover, beyond the exemplars of the micro, meso, and macro level impacts described here, campaigns may also illustrate impact at multiple levels. One such campaign called Morning After Island, by Ogilvy Honduras, brought awareness to the struggles of women in Honduras related to the morning-after pill, which was banned in the country 13 years ago. The campaign entry details that one in every four girls under the age of 18 years old becomes pregnant, and nearly half of those cases are by rape, often by someone with whom they are familiar. The campaign created an “island” in international waters, beyond the reach of the government, to offer the contraceptive pill to women. In addition to garnering positive press, the campaign held micro level impacts through supporting 500-plus women. At a meso level, it mobilized a community of women and allies through 2 million signatures for change and captured the attention of President Xiomara Castro, who ultimately committed to the formation of the Ministry of Women and legislation on sexual reproductive rights, demonstrating a macro level impact (see Appendix, Figure A1g).

In sum, campaigns recognized by the industry awards demonstrated impacts ranging from striving for broad sociocultural shifts (e.g., smashing patriarchy) toward mobilizing organizations and communities to seeking transformations in consumers’ lives, illustrating the power of inclusive advertising at all levels.

Discussion and Implications

Our findings reveal an opportunity to expand the field’s conceptualization of inclusive advertising to include a greater focus on impacts, acknowledging and building on vital work examining representation and identity categories and storytelling. By staying attuned to the real-time shifts in the dynamic industry of advertising, we find there is great potential to drive impact and unlock the transformative power of advertising (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022). By adding the mechanisms and scalability of impact in regard to inclusivity in advertising, we can better amplify existing industry efforts for social change and advance consumer, societal, and institutional well-being (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022), as well as advance understanding of the “social and cultural impacts of advertising”. In the final sections that follow, we expand on the main contribution of our research—specifically, to conceptualize the impacts of inclusive advertising and advocate for a reimagination of inclusive advertising to include social impact outcomes. In turn, we can better understand how social change can be catalyzed through advertising. In addition, we illustrate how awards can be mechanisms for change but note that sustained momentum is needed.

Conceptualizing and Driving Impact in Inclusive Advertising

Building on our findings, which reveal four mechanisms of impact (perceptual, conceptual, instrumental, and political) (see Table 1) across three levels of scalability (micro, meso, macro), we argue that advertising scholarship should expand conceptualizations of gender-inclusive advertising. Drawing from industry-awarded inclusive advertising, we have proposed a conceptual framework of inclusive advertising impacts (see Figure 1). Existing research has focused on advertising effectiveness outcomes of, for instance, gender portrayals in advertising in terms of positive feelings, favorable ad and brand attitudes, counterstereotypical beliefs, and congruency effects (for discussion, see Eisend 2019). We hold that it is time to reimagine what our field conceptualizes as inclusive advertising to move beyond a focus on inclusive representation, or who appears in the advertising. The representation of identity markers such as age, race, ethnicity, class, ability, body size, gender, and sexuality are important. Even more so is the notion that we live at the intersections of multiple identities, which can cause particular injustices at those intersections (Steinfield et al. 2019). Moreover, while an emerging stream of literature advances authentic storytelling as a means of increasing the representations of identities and lived experiences in advertising, we build on this to suggest we must also advance beyond how individuals appear in advertising. That is, inclusive advertising should also embrace an outcome-oriented approach to include measured social impacts of the advertising.

Indeed, representing a diversity of individuals in an authentic manner does not fully capture the potential power of inclusive advertising. Gaining a nuanced understanding of the different mechanisms and levels of scale in which impact appears in campaigns provides scholars and practitioners a road map not only for tracking and measuring impact more closely but also to aid in exploring the long-term drivers of change. By codifying the types and forms of impacts, as per our conceptual framework, we can move toward sustained focus and momentum on advancing positive social change, such as gender-inclusive advertising, and contribute to the theoretical conversation on conceptualizing impacts in advertising. That is, whereas much focus on advertising outcomes has focused on attitudinal, behavioral, emotional, and other psychological effects (as well demonstrated by Eisend and Tarrahi 2016 in their meta-analysis of advertising outcomes), we hope to invigorate attention to meso and macro level impacts as well. We see in our data the salience of instrumental impacts—or impacts that have changed consumer, managerial, or organizational policy and practices—as well as the emergence of political impacts. This demonstrates a potentially positive shift in the advertising industry of moving from talking to doing. Indeed, instrumental impacts (and political impacts) are imperative in affecting change. We propose that the fuller spectrum of inclusive advertising can be captured by expanding the definition of inclusive advertising to include social impacts. In this vein, we offer the Inclusive Advertising Spectrum (see Figure 2), which draws together extant literature on inclusive advertising with impact.

Figure 2. Inclusive Advertising Spectrum.

This spectrum allows for a range of possibilities for thinking about inclusive advertising. While the focus of this study is on impact, we do not mean to imply that all advertising should be on the right hand of the spectrum. However, it does provide a way for scholars and practitioners alike to assess the outcomes of their advertising against the spectrum to determine alignment with their goals. For advertisers looking to engage in purpose-driven marketing or inclusive advertising, it provides a lens to think about advertising outcomes beyond traditional metrics.

On a societal level, our analysis reveals that impact can occur and is recognized at multiple levels: micro, meso, and macro. Importantly, we observe several instances of campaigns that resulted in impacts at multiple levels and employed multiple mechanisms for impact (see Figure 1). Building on this, we might ask: What are the effects of these outcomes on gender equity at multiple levels? Do the outcomes advanced by the advertising industry align with social values advanced through other gender equity initiatives, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals? Do the outcomes advanced by the advertising industry move organizations toward collective action regarding gender equity and improve individual lived experiences? These important questions will benefit from scholarship that examines well-being across and between all levels of the advertising ecosystem (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022).

Right now, we document that the advertising industry has taken a vested interest in EDI goals, including gender inclusivity, with industry leaders referring to these initiatives as “movements.” While millennial and Gen Z consumers, many of whom expect brands to demonstrate their values, are generating a lot of attention toward social issues, what can scholars who have long decried the problematic issues of gender in advertising do to leverage such inflection points to maintain focus on important social topics? Of note is recent research that actually finds less representation of non-White individuals in advertising in 2022 than in 2021. The U.S. chief creative officer (CCO) for Interpublic subsidiary R/GA, quoted in a recent Forbes article about advertisers’ responses after the George Floyd murder, said, “People felt like they had to act, and so I think that there was a lot of acting” (Council 2023). Accordingly, we observe in our data and in recent press articles that there is a bandwagon effect that may be occurring as a multitude of brands and advertisers are claiming to be purpose driven and inclusive. Academics can play a key role in ensuring that movements toward inclusivity in the industry and the emphasis on outcome-oriented impact among advertisers are not simply hot topics but that they become part of the fabric of good advertising. Thus, we suggest that academics have a role to play in ensuring these topics remain in focus, such as through seeking ways to build industry–academic collaborations, which would include taking perspectives of professionals into consideration (Zayer and Coleman 2015) and pushing for legitimizing practices in advertising, such as industry awards, that are authentic in their commitment and action.

Awards As Mechanisms for Sustaining (Gender-) Inclusive Progress

In this study, we also contribute to the awards literature by examining how impact functions through awards. We set out to understand how impacts are conveyed in inclusive advertising, using the outcomes of campaigns prestigiously awarded for addressing gender inequities to analyze the reported impacts of these campaigns. The value of awards festivals has been the subject of debate in advertising. In 2016, for example, Amir Kassaei, then-CCO of DDB Global, offered harsh criticism of awards when he announced DDB’s withdrawal from the awards show circuit, stating, “If we are coming up with social ideas that pretend to solve the world’s biggest problems or help disenfranchised people, but, in fact, are only being done to win an award, we are cynical and perhaps even criminal” (qtd. in Coffee 2016). Yet, as others point out, prestigious award festivals are important internal and external promotional tools for agencies, bringing visibility and notoriety to agencies, advertising professionals, and clients (Hallam 2020; Matejko 2022), and they are important measures for recognizing creativity, strategy, and outcomes. In this research, we note that dedicated industry awards are one way to benchmark and maintain movement toward inclusive impacts, but it is vital that they must not be window dressing and rather are committed initiatives.

While scholars and practitioners have rightly questioned the value and limitations of using creative awards as proxies for creativity (Kilgour, Sasser, and Koslow 2013), the current research offers a benchmark for what is legitimized through these awards as gender inclusive. As Galmés, Berlanga, and Victoria (2016) note, “[T]here is a special elasticity in the ‘awards’ element, due to their specific interaction with the structure of the advertising system,” and they serve as “an active mirror of the advertising activity” and may legitimize within the industry what qualities of campaigns are worth future pursuit (83). To this end, we propose that awards festivals can be mechanisms for change in mirroring what is valued in the advertising industry and by clients and in legitimizing future pursuits. For example, the Cannes Lions awards organized around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are responsive to the United Nations’ call to action for a better and sustainable future and offer a road map for organizations to connect their brand purpose to global social goals. Collectively, under the spotlight of the Cannes Lions, these awards not only bring attention to advertising work that supports the SDGs, such as gender equity, but in doing so may have the effect of driving more effort to these areas by activating the “special elasticity” of the awards in legitimizing future pursuits. Due to their gravitational pull on agencies that like to win awards and clients that like to hire award-winning agencies, not only can the awards recognize advertising through impact; awards also can be strategic outlets to build impact across a wide range of social goals from increasing diversity behind the camera and more inclusive jury pools to controlling carbon emissions (Neff 2022b).

Conclusion

Representational diversity, equity, and inclusion are important areas of scholarly inquiry in advertising, in no small part because of the impacts of representation on lived experiences of identity (Borgerson and Schroeder 2002). Importantly, research has examined advertising’s social role, highlighting brands as “cultural intermediaries” (Cronin 2004) and advertising’s societal and economic impacts (Stafford and Taylor 2022). Because culture is living, ongoing work on these issues is important to maintain benchmarks for what advertising is doing and normative critiques for what advertising should be doing. Considering the important role of advertising as a cultural intermediary, for example, recent research has rightly called for expanded work on diversity and intersectional attributes (Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren 2023) and to include advertisers’ perspectives and the dilemmas they may face (Coleman, Zayer, and Karaca 2020; Drumwright and Murphy 2009; Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren 2023; Zayer and Coleman 2015) in creating gender-inclusive campaigns. In the case of inclusive advertising, much existing literature centers on discussions of identity categories. This work (e.g., Eisend, Muldrow, and Rosengren 2023) clearly maps the important foundational issues related to inclusive advertising. However, we advocate for an expanded view that mirrors what we observe in the work being conducted in the advertising industry itself. Our research identifies four mechanisms for impact (perceptual, conceptual, instrumental, and political) and scalability across micro, meso, and macro levels as salient themes in the award-winning and shortlisted campaigns recognized by the industry as gender inclusive. Through these mechanisms and scales of impact identified, we offer a construct definition of inclusive advertising impacts, identifying how social impact can be conceptualized in advertising and furthering understanding of how inclusive advertising can drive positive social change. In addition, we offer contributions to further develop research on inclusive advertising through the inclusive advertising spectrum and identify awards as a mechanism for sustained change.

Future Research and Limitations

In line with our concluding thoughts, a future area of research could examine the commitment and intentionality of the levels and types of impact. That is, what sustained impacts do advertising professionals hope to have as they make creative and strategic decisions related to their work? For instance, the CCO of Ogilvy Greece for the Lacta campaign states in a case study on the World Federation of Advertisers website: “If one woman is saved by learning the early signs of an abusive relationship from this campaign, it will have been a success” (World Federation of Advertisers 2022). Moreover, research should seek understanding of the drivers behind these impact objectives as well as further develop measurements pertaining to the outcomes of each mechanism for impact that we identify. Prior research points to the influence of various stakeholders, including competitors, regulatory bodies, and, of course, consumers, as well as the influence of agency–client relationships on strategic and creative choices (Gurrieri, Zayer, and Coleman 2022). Accordingly, there may be opportunities to provide a theoretical foundation for reconceptualizing advertising outcomes in the academic literature and in industry, through which the impacts may be realized. For example, several organizations at the crossroads of industry and social change have made measurement a cornerstone of their efforts to bring about a more equitable and inclusive agenda to the advertising, film, and media industries. For instance, the Association of National Advertisers launched #SeeHer in 2016 and introduced the Gender Equality Measure (2021 GEM Lift 2022Study, IRI Publications n.d.) while the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (GD-IQ) utilizes machine learning in the analysis of audio and video content to identify representation of six identities (“Research Informs & Empowers” n.d.). These efforts suggest commitment within and around the advertising industry to advance inclusive goals. Future research could build on the impacts identified in this study to develop a measure for transformative impacts in advertising. Collaborations with industry partners may help provide theoretical support in guiding industry efforts toward well-being in the advertising ecosystem. A limitation of our work is that it investigates award-winning campaigns in a snapshot of time in 2022; that is, it does not examine patterns over time. Exploring these issues longitudinally, or their potential effects over the long term, would offer further insights on the extent to which social change is advanced and impact is amplified. We also focus on gender as our orienting lens for inclusive advertising in this article. Future research should consider how we can enhance our understanding of inclusive advertising across different social inequities by adopting a more intersectional approach.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Heather Higgins and the Loyola University Chicago ACE Scholars program for enabling excellent research assistance with this project.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflicts of interest were reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Tuncay Zayer

Linda Tuncay Zayer (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) is the John F. Smith Jr. Chair in Business Administration and a professor of marketing, Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University Chicago

Catherine A. Coleman

Catherine A. Coleman (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) is a professor and chair, Strategic Communication, Department of Strategic Communication, Texas Christian University.

Lauren Gurrieri

Lauren Gurrieri (PhD, University of Melbourne) is an associate professor, Marketing, School of Economics, Finance, and Marketing, RMIT University.

Appendix.

Images in campaigns (converted to digital art, images not in original form)

 

Figure A1. (a) Child Marriage Prevention Loan Campaign, IPDC Finance Ltd. & Amal Foundation, Grey Bangladesh, Dhaka. Pictured here: A young mother, a child bride, now with her own child. (b) Beyond the Binary Campaign, Spark, Colenso BBDO, Auckland, New Zealand. Pictured here: A depiction of the option to choose beyond binary (man/woman) categories online. (c) As Early As Five, Dove/Unilever, Ogilvy, London/SWIFT, Portland, United Kingdom. Pictured here: A young girl featured in the campaign who narrates the ad describing her struggle to combat race-based hair discrimination through the years. (d) DojaCode, Girls Who Code, MoJo Supermarket, New York, United States. Pictured here: Collaboration with musician Doja Cat to get girls interested in coding through a campaign that features the first-ever codable music video. (e) Signal for Help, Canadian Women’s Foundation, Juniper Park/TBWA, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Pictured here: A woman uses the discreet hand gesture—the Signal for Help—to alert others during a video call that she is in threat of experiencing gender-based violence. (f) See Equal #SharetheLoad for Ariel, P&G India, BBDO India, Mumbai, India. Pictured here: An Indian woman is featured in the ad questioning the issues of equality surrounding household duties and gender roles. (g) Morning After Island, Grupo Estratégico PAE, Ogilvy Honduras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Pictured here: A Honduran woman stands on a wooden platform “island” in international waters where emergency contraception pills can be used legally.