Wacl campaign urges industry to work with ‘more diverse breadth of women’

Wacl, the network for women in the communications industry, has launched a campaign to call for better representation of all women in advertising.

Influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy collaborated on the campaign.

A team led by Jessica Lenehan, managing director, client leadership, at EssenceMediacomX, planned pro bono inventory supplied by Snap, YouTube and Pinterest to target agency creatives and planners, as well as decision-makers across the wider industry.

Nishma Patel Robb, president of Wacl, told The Media Leader that the aim is to generate conversation, empower the industry to work with “a more diverse breadth of women” and ultimately encourage people to measure not just presence but progress.

Activity will run until August as part of the Represent Me initiative and builds on Wacl’s first public campaign last year that was designed to showcase the importance of positive gender representation in advertising.

What representation means

The focus of the campaign is interviews between four female creators who represented “the breadth and depth of modern women” and Selma Nicholls and Chloë Davies, members of Wacl’s Represent Me committee, about what representation in advertising meant to them.

Trina Nicole is a body-confidence influencer and founder of the UK’s first plus-size dance class; Ellen Jones is a writer, speaker and activist for neurodiversity and LGBQT+; Jamelia Donaldson is the founder and CEO of subscription box Treasure Tress; and Lucy Edwards is a broadcaster, journalist, author and disability activist.

The results were combined into a longer-form film as well as short clips to share across social channels.

Patel Robb described the representation of women in advertising as “still disgracefully inadequate” and highlighted the importance of seeing the world through the eyes of these creators, whose significant followings were “proof that audiences want to hear from women like these”.

She continued: “We, as an industry, are not taking this issue seriously enough. Together, we must drive a new era of change. This creative campaign demonstrates the breadth of real women and their stories, showing audiences every woman matters.”

Becky Owen, global chief marketing officer at Billion Dollar Boy, added: “Representation must be a marketing priority. Not all women are seen yet, or are only seen in small numbers. This campaign celebrates the progress made, while urging us to keep pushing forward.”