This morning I checked my email, just to find out I had received several International Women's Day emails from various brands. One, in particular, made me emit a strange, snorting sound - something in between a laugh and an affronted grunt. The email was offering me a discount for a manicure. Because, you know, you might have dirt under your nails after spending the last few centuries digging your way out from under patriarchy.

Here is a general tip: if your business profits from the standards imposed on women by society, that is fine. Businesses are not people with consciousnesses. But marketing teams are. Please abstain from communications on this specific day of the year, or, at least, have the decency to not lean on the struggle of women throughout history for your comms. To clarify - this is not a celebratory day when we all drink champagne and have pillow fights. This is a day when we acknowledge hundreds of years of hustling to obtain the right to vote, the right to education, the right to not be sexually harassed (OK we are still working on that one) and other freedoms and rights that edge us ever closer to that priviledged space of unquestioned existence currently held primarily by white men. We do not want flowers and free shipping, we want equality.

If equality isn't truly one of the core values of your brand, you have no business communicating explicitly on these issues. You do, however, always have a responsibility to look at everything you put out in the public space, or directly in someone's inbox, and reflect on if you are are a part of the problem. Manicures in themselves are (fairly) neutral - how you choose to communicate about them is not.

Here are 4 things you should be doing (and that will improve your business, as well*):

1. Review your core values - are they implicit in the supression of women? Maybe you can tweek them to, well, not be. You can sell me lipstick without insinuating that I am nothing but red lips for the male gaze, and you can sell shower gel to men without implying that manliness is equal to having drone women swoon around you. Be smarter than that.
2. Review your segmentation and targeting - is it relevant to attribute certain properties to  target purely on the base of gender? Or are there smarter ways to make sure you are relevant, such as rational/emotional drivers, interests, income brackets?
3. Review your messaging - just make sure you're not actually offending your intended audience. This sounds like a given, but given the amount of distasteful and insulting messages that reach me in my inbox, my Instagram feed, in public spaces, it is clearly not. 
4. Read. Or watch Youtube, if you prefer. Find out about the male gaze and the sexualisation of the female body in society. Learn about the causality between dehumanization and abuse. Consider how representation and gender stereotyping affects our minds and our society. 

Here is a little something to get you started:

The hottest thing on the advertising circuit at the moment is this campaign for Lacoste X Save Our Species, the Lacoste/International Union for the Conservation of Nature collab, created by BETC. Whoever thought of this brilliant collaboration to bring the tennis brand positioning out of the collars-turned-up-in-the-country club space to young, fresh and woke, is a genius.


Above, an illustration of the brand repositioning.
Clearly, A+ for execution. I am considering buying a polo shirt for the first time since the nineties, and I find the 150€ price tag reasonable because I like animals, and the little rhinoceros speaks to me (he says "help, there are only 67 of me left!").

I have nothing mean to say about the above campaign, but it does make me think of the exploitation of super cute animals (so, all animals) in advertising. Let's have a little look, and a discussion about the pink unicorn in the room.


NORD DDB created this campaign featuring the doge meme and got a lot of traction in social media, and were even reported to Reklamombudsmannen (RO) for being racist towards Japanese people (due to the origin of the Shiba in connection with the bad grammar) which gave them additional PR. The campaign was finally freed of the allegations. I think the dog is the real star of the ad here but I also find it a bit lazy to take a masterpiece collectively created by "the internet" and lean so heavily on it (see also: Zlatan, Rihanna).


These ads for Pedigree Dentastix were created by BBDO. Seeing as the ads are trying to sell you a healthy snack for dogs, I cannot consider this exploitative. These dogs are trying to get owners to buy snacks that are good for their teeth, and therefore helping all dogs. They are heroes. And because most owners look like their dogs, I think this really works.



This Nutri Balance ad crafted by Y&R is truly good-looking, and perhaps a bit too premium-feel for dogfood, but my main objection is the messaging here; I would argue that the owners are the bad one's in the story told here, and it seems petty to blame the dogs. Admittedly there is a lot of storytelling in a single image, and the comedy is pretty solid so again, kudos, Y&R.