IRI®, a global leader in innovative solutions and services
for consumer, retail, and media companies, today revealed the results of
a study into the social and financial incentives associated with the
depiction of women and girls in advertising campaigns. IRI partnered
with the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) SeeHer movement to
determine if an accurate and positive portrayal of women in advertising
could drive incremental sales lift, impact consumer behavior, result in
a sale or drive a shopping trip and, critically, if these changes occur
with the depth and speed required in today’s accelerated marketplace.
The work was done across categories for six SeeHer members:
Anheuser-Busch, Clorox, Hershey, Kellogg’s, Keurig Dr. Pepper and
L’Oréal.
The study linked the depiction of women to offline sales by leveraging
SeeHer’s Gender Equality Measure (GEM™) score, an index of 100
representing consumer reaction to the treatment of women in advertising
and programming, with IRI’s media measurement and optimization solution
IRI Lift™.
The results conclusively demonstrated a direct correlation between
higher GEM™ scores and incremental sales lift:
-
Ads with the highest sales lift had the highest GEM™ scores, whereas
ads with the lowest sales lift had the lowest GEM™ scores. -
Creatives with GEM™ scores greater than 100 drove sales lifts up to
five times higher than ads with scores less than 100. -
Television programs with GEM™ scores greater than 100 drove sales lift
nearly two times higher than programs with GEM™ scores of less than
100. -
When ads with the highest GEM™ scores are incorporated into programs
with high GEM™ scores, the resulting incremental sales lift is higher
still.
“IRI is pleased to partner with SeeHer to increase accurate portrayals
of women and girls in U.S. advertising,” said Jennifer Pelino, senior
vice president of the IRI Media Center for Excellence. “As the results
of our study show, in addition to the powerful social incentives of
supporting the SeeHer movement, there is meaningful financial upside for
marketers who consider GEM™ scores in planning the content and context
of their ads.”
“Our GEM™ metric has added a new dimension for evaluating ads for gender
equality,” said Shelley Zalis, SeeHer co-founder and CEO, The Female
Quotient. “We can now directly correlate positive GEM™ scores with
increased purchase intent and actual sales lift.”
Women are industry influencers for both the messages produced and the
buying power they command. Study results amplify the pressure on
marketers to join the growing SeeHer movement by uncovering newfound
financial incentives associated with higher GEM™ scores. This
groundbreaking initiative shows the impact of marketing efforts made to
more effectively speak to women through advertising, which has resulted
in improvements to the bottom line and greater equality in media.
GEM™ is a trademark of the ANA. GEM™ scores for
this study were provided by SeeHer and were generated by SeeHer
syndicated research partner ABX.
About IRI
IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and
forward-looking insights that help CPG, OTC health care organizations,
retailers and media companies to grow their businesses. With the largest
repository of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all
integrated on an on-demand, cloud-based technology platform, IRI helps
to guide its more than 5,000 clients around the world in their quests to
remain relentlessly relevant, capture market share, connect with
consumers and deliver market-leading growth. A confluence of major
external events — a revolution in consumer buying, big data coming into
its own, advanced analytics and automated consumer activation — is
leading to a seismic shift in drivers of success in all industries.
Ensure that your business can leverage data at www.iriworldwide.com.
About SeeHer
Despite the strides made to accurately portray women and girls in media,
an unconscious bias persists against women and girls in advertising,
media and programming. The ANA (Association of National Advertisers)
launched the SeeHer initiative in June 2016 in a partnership with The
Female Quotient (TFQ) at the United State of Women Summit. SeeHer’s
mission is to accurately portray all women and girls in media so that
they can see themselves reflected as they truly are–and so that the
world can see them with 20/20 vision. SeeHer’s goal is to increase the
accurate portrayals of women and girls in media by 20 percent by 2020.
The group developed a Gender Equality Measure (GEM™) to track progress
and the marketing effect of removing unconscious bias from ads and
programming. High GEM™ scores directly correlate to improved ROI. GEM™
won the 2017 ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award. The methodology became
the industry standard in the U.S., which led to a global rollout in
2018. For more information, visit www.SeeHer.com,
and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @SeeHer2020.
About the Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) makes a difference for
individuals, brands, and the industry by driving growth, advancing the
interests of marketers, and promoting and protecting the well-being of
the marketing community. Founded in 1910, the ANA provides leadership
that advances marketing excellence and shapes the future of the
industry. The ANA’s membership includes more than 1,700 companies with
25,000 brands that engage almost 150,000 industry professionals and
collectively spend or support more than $400 billion in marketing and
advertising annually. The membership is comprised of more than 1,000
client-side marketers and more than 700 marketing solutions provider
members, which include leading marketing data science and technology
suppliers, ad agencies, law firms, consultants, and vendors. Further
enriching the ecosystem is the work of the nonprofit ANA Educational
Foundation (AEF), which has the mission of enhancing the understanding
of advertising and marketing within the academic and marketing
communities. For more information, visit www.ana.net,
follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or join us on Facebook.
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