Advertising “like a girl”: Toward a better understanding of “femvertising” and its effects

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of femvertising (female empowerment advertising). More specifically, it hypothesizes that femvertising (vs. traditional portrayals of females in advertising) will reduce ad reactance among a female target audience, and that this in turn will enhance ad and brand attitudes. The results of three experimental studies indicate that this is indeed the case, and that the results hold across print and digital media, for five different product categories, and for femvertising focusing on challenging female stereotypes in terms of physical characteristics as well as the roles and occupations used to portray women in advertising. Although previous studies of the effects of female portrayals tend to focus on social comparison and self-identity, the current paper considers the role of psychological reactance to (more or less) stereotypical portrayals in explaining these effects. The results suggest that marketers have much to gain from adapting a more proactive and mindful approach to the female portrayals they use in their ads. K E Y W O R D S ad reactance, female empowerment, female portrayals, femvertising Psychol Mark. 2017;34:795-806.

Does Humour Influence Perceptions of the Ethicality of Female-Disparaging Advertising?

“…Embracing more socially-critical research approaches (such as ethnography and phenomenology) could potentially provide more holistic and integrated insights regarding the ethicality of female-disparaging ads and the related effects on the ad, the brand, individuals, and society (Ahuvia 1998). Further research might also benefit from investigating alternative advertising themes, such as those which challenge traditional, stereotypical, female portrayals (see Akestam et al 2017) or those which include portrayals of male-disparagement and additional psychological propensities, such as religious commitment (Putrevu and Swimberghek 2013). Second, we used only one (low-involvement and ungendered) product category (cola drink) and a single style of humour (disparaging).…”

Femvertising, igualdad de género y el efecto de la tercera persona en las mujeres trabajadoras de Gamarra

“…Desde su concepción, la femvertising o también denominada publicidad Go-girl, progénero, promujer o Ad-her-tising (Baxter, 2015;Rodríguez & Gutiérrez, 2017), se refiere a una publicidad que se esfuerza por ofrecer un discurso potencialmente emancipador, evitando mensajes lesivos sobre las mujeres, estereotipos de género, vejación de la imagen femenina y ridiculización de ellas (Menéndez, 2019). La femvertising busca empoderar al público femenino, deleitando audiencias, inspirando acciones, creando afinidad y siendo una estrategia exitosa para las marcas dirigidas exclusivamente a las mujeres (Akestam et al, 2017;Hsu, 2018).…”

“…Además, se revisaron diversos estudios acerca de la femvertising y el efecto de la tercera persona. Respecto a la femvertising, se encontraron estudios que (a) tratan sobre los efectos, actitudes o impacto de esta (Abitbol & Sternadori, 2016;Akestam et al, 2017;Almeida, 2015;Becker-Herby, 2016;Drake, 2017;Menéndez, 2019); (b) muestran sus efectos sobre otros públicos como el masculino (Abdallah et al, 2018;Baxter, 2015); y, (c) abarcan casos específicos de marcas reconocidas a nivel mundial (Abreu, 2016;Rodríguez & Gutiérrez, 2017;Menéndez, 2018). En el contexto peruano, se encontraron dos estudios sobre la femvertising en donde se analizan sus actitudes y efectos de los spots en las mujeres peruanas.…”

“…En el siglo XXI, los primeros ejemplos sobre la femvertising son las campañas «Real beauty» de Dove (2004) y «Like a Girl» de Always (2014) (Akestam, Rosengren & Dahlen, 2017;Hylander & Svanberg 2016;Feng, Cheng & He, 2019;. Por medio de un spot, Dove presentaba a mujeres con cuerpos «reales» con el objetivo de reconstruir los estándares de belleza para incluir todos los colores de piel, tipos de cuerpo, alturas, pesos, arrugas, rollos y defectos (Mamuric, 2018).…”

“…«Real beauty» de Dove es considerada una de las primeras campañas publicitarias en volverse viral en las redes sociales (Bahadur, 2014). El video «Like a Girl» de Always tuvo más de 60 millones de visitas en YouTube (Akestam et al, 2017).…”