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Strategic partnerships with media and entertainment powerhouses Queen Latifah and Katie Couric launched by Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company advanced its commitment to gender equality through a series of new actions, commitments and partnerships to increase diversity throughout the creative supply chain, leading to more accurate and positive portrayals of women in advertising and media, and driving growth and social good.
Women and girls are inaccurately or negatively portrayed in 29% of ads and media programmes, and women continue to be underrepresented behind the camera: only 32% of Chief Marketing Officers, 33% of Chief Creative Officers and a mere 10% of Commercial Directors are women. These issues persist despite evidence that gender-equal ads perform 10% higher in trust and 26% higher in sales growth.
To address these issues, Procter & Gamble has called for an aspiration to achieve 100% accurate and positive portrayals of women in advertising and media, supported by equal representation of women and men in the creative supply chain.
P&G is leading a comprehensive set of actions to do its part to build, fuel and connect a pipeline of diverse female talent to advertising, media and content opportunities as a systemic solution.
Recognising the importance of full industry participation, it is working with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) #SeeHer movement and other industry initiatives, including the UN Women Unstereotype Alliance, to invite other advertisers, agencies and content developers to drive change across the commercial ecosystem.
“As the world’s greatest creative minds gather to celebrate creativity, we are committed to do our part with meaningful actions to advance gender equality in advertising, media and the creative pipeline in the next five years,” said Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer, Procter & Gamble.
“We also know no company can do it alone, so we hope to inspire others to be agents of change to accelerate momentum.”
As part of the commitment, P&G has announced partnerships with industry leaders driving equal representation and positive portrayals of women in media:
The Queen Collective: Oscar nominee and winner of a Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG Award, Queen Latifah, along with her Production Company Flavor Unit and the Queen Collective aim to accelerate gender and racial equality behind the camera.
By creating distribution for films produced by diverse female directors, Queen Latifah builds on her track record of challenging boundaries in music, movies and other artistic endeavours. The initiative will initially greenlight two films produced by female directors through a major distribution partner.
In 2016, women comprised only four per cent of directors working on the top 250 grossing films. This creates challenges not only in film, but also in production of other mediums such as advertising.
The Queen Collective will fuel the pipeline of women directors in a partnership with P&G, HP, Inc., Smirnoff, Wieden+Kennedy, Marina Maher Communications / Ketchum +, United Talent Agency Marketing and Tribeca Studios.
Katie Couric Media: The award-winning journalist’s latest undertaking will partner sponsors with distribution platforms to create smart, thoughtful, empowering content. Inspired by her involvement on the advisory board of #SeeHer, an initiative of the Association of National Advertisers, Couric will partner with major brands to collaborate on content that reflects their mutual values and commitment to important issues.
Katie Couric Media will be led by a female-driven team to produce and distribute stories in a variety of formats leveraging the power and reach of the changing media landscape, including digital series, documentaries, scripted projects, podcasts and live programming on platforms that best reach the target audiences interested in specific content.
Free The Bid: Founded by Alma Har’el in response to her personal experience of the lack of opportunities for women directors in advertising, this organisation advocates for equal opportunities to bid on commercial jobs in the advertising industry.
Procter & Gamble and its brands are taking the pledge to promise to include a woman director on any triple-bid commercial project. In parallel, P&G’s largest agency partner, Publicis Groupe, is expanding its pledge to cover all their agencies and networks worldwide.
P&G has also committed to helping expand Free the Bid worldwide over the next three years in partnership with HP, and Publicis Groupe to double Free The Bid’s number of directors and expand to 20 countries.
#SheIsEqual Summit: To share creative successes and inspire broader action for gender equality, Global Citizen and P&G will partner and co-host the first #SheIsEqual Summit on 28 September, 2018 in New York during UN General Assembly Week.
The event will bring together governments, private sector companies, and influencers from advertising, media and entertainment to share perspectives on gender equality, women’s economic empowerment, girls’ education and advocacy through the lens of representation of women in the media, marketing, technology and entertainment.
Madonna Badger, Glass Lion Jury President and See It Be It Chair will curate a “Creative Showcase” in partnership with Phillip Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO, to highlight and celebrate the best work from the 2018 Glass Lions and new SDG Lions competitions that positively portrays an equal world.
The ANA #SeeHer initiative will create sessions that discuss the role media plays in society and the importance of accurate representation of women and girls in entertainment.
“Gender equality is good for society and business,” added Pritchard. “Some of Procter & Gamble’s best performing brands have the most gender-equal campaigns – Always Like a Girl, SKII Change Destiny, Olay Live Fearlessly, as well as Tide, Ariel, Dawn, and Swiffer which show men sharing the load in household chores. It is clear that promoting gender equality is not only a force for good, it is a force for growth.”
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