When it comes to women's representation in media and advertising, India has travelled a long way from its initial days. From how women look on screen to how the teams have evolved behind the scenes, there is an impressive story of transformation. However, despite this progress, it still seems that the country is moving at quite a slow pace to make the world of advertising and media equal. At a recent panel discussion on the topic ‘Creativity & India’s Equality Moonshot’, hosted by World Woman Cannes Agenda on the sidelines of the Cannes Lions global festival of creativity, women leaders from the industry discussed these issues while highlighting some of the impressive achievements coming in from the Indian advertising industry.
Sitting on the panel were Neeta Nair, Editor, IMPACT (exchange4media Group); Meera Sharath Chandra, CEO & CCO, Tigress Tigress; Sonal Chhajerh, Group Executive Creative Director, Leo Burnett India, and Anupama Ramaswamy, CCO, Havas Worldwide India. The session was moderated by Stuti Jalan, Founder, Crosshairs Communication and Women Inspiring Network.
The discussion started with a profound question on how far has the Indian advertising and media industry has come when it comes to women's representation, wherein panelists discussed names like Priyanka Chopra and Alia Bhatt representing India at a global level, bagging international campaigns and leading entertainment projects.
However, Nair, while applauding the achievements of names like Swati Bhattacharya, the first-ever woman network CCO in India; Roda Mehta, the first woman recipient of AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award; and Usha Bhandarkar the legendary ad-woman who introduced strong women protagonists like Surf’s Lalita Ji, highlighted that the pace of progress is quite slow, “It was as late as 2016 that we got the first woman network CCO in advertising, which is Swati Bhattacharya. Roda Mehta got the AAAI lifetime achievement award only after 23 to 24 men did before her. And even today, I can count the names of women CCOs of network agencies in the industry on a single hand. While we are changing, it is not at the pace that I really want to see.”
Chandra, on the other hand, talked about women in advertising who broke the glass ceiling by starting their own independent agencies, “I feel that they got stifled in an environment which was not conducive to women. I think that was a tipping point in the industry where women said, ‘enough is enough.’ We're doing it our way. There was Elsie Nanji, there was Tara Sinha and Preeti Vyas who stood up and said take notice of me and started their own agencies. Also, look at Ekta Kapoor. She just took over television serial space because no man was fighting for it. She owned it all.”
The panel further discussed how the advertising industry has changed when it comes to representation of women on screen and a lot of interesting campaigns were talked about.
Ramaswamy talked about her campaign for Paytm, which she created during her stint at Dentsu Impact (now part of Dentsu Creative) to highlight the ill-perception that people had about women’s financial dependence. The campaign consisted of a social experiment called ‘The Divide’, which Ramaswamy shared emerged from her personal experiences, “When investing in real estate, you're often told to bring someone older, which usually means a man. Similarly, financial advisors may ask for your husband to join, implying you need his approval to invest your own money. If you spend a bonus on your parents, friends might comment on how nice it is that your husband allowed it. These experiences inspired a campaign using a simple HR tool. We invited friends and family to answer questions, stepping forward for 'yes' and back for 'no.' Starting with basic questions like ‘Do you know how to make an omelette?’ we progressed to financial queries like ‘Do you know your PF details?’ It was shocking to see faces fall as successful individuals realized their financial ignorance.”
She also talked about an auto client who several times scrapped her idea of having a woman behind the wheel and finally giving up as she persisted to bring a change. “It’s the small wins,” she quipped.
Chhajerh further talked about her work on Whisper where they are working hard to spread menstrual literacy among young girls, “Our work offers incredible opportunities, and it's up to us to seize and build on them. Working closely with P&G Whisper, I discovered that 23 million girls in India drop out of school every year due to a lack of education about periods. This lack of knowledge marks the end of their education and future, leading to early marriage and exploitation. To address this, we started a year-long campaign called ‘Missing Chapter’ with Whisper. We conducted fieldwork and research to understand the problem deeply. The campaign aimed to make periods a widely discussed topic because in India, schools don't include a chapter on periods in their curriculum.”
She added that she understood the importance of this campaign when she herself witnessed her 10-year-old daughter having a difficult time dealing with her first period, “I had educated her about this but she got her first period when I was COVID-positive, locked up in a room away from her. We were talking about it on the phone and I felt so helpless to see her scared. This was despite she having all the education. That’s when I realised, mere education is not important, we need to have some action too.”
Listening to this, Jalan interjected with a personal anecdote, mentioning that she used Whisper’s new digital film to start a conversation on periods with her eight year old, emphasising how ad campaigns do have a real impact on-ground, as well.
To take the discussion ahead, Chandra highlighted her work done for Citi Bank, “One example I'm particularly proud of is the first credit card campaign I did that targeted women. At that time, women were just add-ons to their father's or husband's cards, which isn't financial independence because it allows others to monitor and judge their purchases. We created this campaign for Citibank, whose all-male client team boldly supported it. It was a huge success. Ford noticed the campaign and shared it with their Detroit office, leading me to join an eight-woman global task force for automotive campaigns targeting women. This shows that if you commit to an idea, you can break through any barriers.”
Nair also reflected on how the general portrayal of women is slowly evolving in advertising over the years from a self-sacrificing person to one who wants to focus on herself, chooses to remain single or child-free like the WhatsApp ad made by BBDO India.
Albeit, she also highlighted how the off-screen representation of women is still not at par to where it should be in the advertising industry by sharing an anecdote, “90% of our leadership roles, at exchange4media Group, are occupied by women. We focus on dedicated features like "Most Influential Women," honouring top change makers. Our cover stories consistently address the narrative progress in advertising. We ensure equal representation of women on every panel. However, I want to highlight an issue. Once, in our annual best ads cover story, after thorough research – sadly, the list had nine men and one woman. We went ahead and published it because it was backed by a fair process. Unfortunately, a parody that started circulating later featured nine women and one man on the IMPACT Magazine cover. This, I believe, undermines women’s work. Forced representation isn't the solution; we need genuine progress in advertising. No cover story should skew so heavily towards males, but shouldn't industries first improve gender representation organically, based on merit, not tokenism.”
She concluded by saying that the onus should not be on the media only, which is covering advertising, but on the industry that is hiring these women and not giving them enough leadership roles and representation.
