Representation in marketing is a baseline for any brand seeking to appeal across audience demographics.
But what about the positioning of people in marketing materials?
For example, CeraVe tapped TV personality Tyler Cameron and dermatologist Dr. Chloe Goldman for its latest campaign and PR photos show Cameron in more dominant positions. (I’m not picking on CeraVe or its agencies, as this is just the latest example I’ve noticed.) Since the shots are at a construction project and he’s the contractor, it might make sense in this case.
However, it’s not just in marketing.
A simple image search for a female sitting and a male standing delivers similar results to searching for images of a male sitting and a female standing. The inherent position biases in images – which subtly point to male authority and female subjugation – are clearly prevalent.
But marketers can change that.
Marketers have an important role in shaping society’s perceptions, roles, values and, yes, stereotypes. And despite any political and policy dictates, it’s incumbent upon each one of us to make the best effort to connect with our target audiences.
Early in my PR career, I attended a conference with one of the speakers focusing on multicultural marketing. He said that studies showed that an ad featuring a Hispanic person resonated more with that community, whereas there was no impact (positive or negative) on the ad’s effectiveness among white audience members.
While I’d like to see updated data, I bet that the same goes for today’s audiences. Tying into one audience segment doesn’t mean you’re shielding your features/benefits and values from others.
We know that it is important to represent and show nuances reflective of varying races, biological sex, orientation and other demographic factors in marketing materials.
It’s also just as important to show how people in those marketing materials relate to each other and what’s being conveyed by where and how they are positioned in the photos.
You don’t need a dramatic cultural movement to shift inherent and systemic biases. Sometimes, a little subtlety is enough to start to shift mindsets.
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