MPI campaign makes point using tired stereotype

Opinion

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This article was published 16/01/2019 (2172 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some companies have begun to understand the importance of gender when designing their advertising campaigns. Take, for example, Gillette and its latest — and, arguably, most thought-provoking — campaign, which makes a bold statement about toxic masculinity in the #MeToo era.

“Femvertising” has also become another way for companies to empower women. Five years after the term was coined, there are more than 350 brands and advertising agencies that are working at presenting women and girls in new and exciting ways in ads.

Other companies have suffered the wrath and scorn of women when their advertising hit tone-deaf notes. The marketing of poorly conceived ideas, such as a pink Bic pen for girls, or advertising campaigns that relegate women to the laundry room or the kitchen — or worse yet, to drape them over a car or a liquor bottle in order to sell something — are really nothing new. According to a study from the research team at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, gender inequality in advertising is still an issue.

According to joint research by the Geena Davis Institute and the marketing communications firm J. Walter Thompson New York, in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, women are still missing in TV ads, even though women make most of the buying decisions. As well, female representation in commercials (number of characters, time on screen, speaking time, etc.) has not improved in more than a decade.

That doesn’t, however, make the latest ad from Manitoba Public Insurance forgivable.

MPI’s first anti-fraud ad features a young woman walking through a stylized mall, laden with shopping bags, talking in her best valley-girl voice to a friend about how she’s committed insurance fraud and has managed to milk the system so she can collect money and shop.

According to MPI’s media relations co-ordinator, Brian Smiley, this is the first time MPI has used a TV commercial to raise awareness about the financial effect of auto insurance fraud. The direct cost to each MPI customer is $50 annually, Smiley says; the overall financial effect of fraud on MPI’s bottom line is approximately $50 million.

But the offending demographic is hardly a valley girl shopping in a Prairie mall. One in four fraudsters is a female under 44, 40 per cent overall are female and the average age of a fraudster is 40.

What the ad does, unfortunately, is set up another stereotype, similar to the tired old trope that women can’t drive. And this may be another example of why 85 per cent of women surveyed felt that when “it comes to representing them, the advertising world needs to catch up with the real world.”

Smiley admits he has received some complaints about the ad, but he also says he has heard several compliments. And to be fair, he adds, the ad was focus-tested internally, with an audience split 50/50 between male and female participants.

Overall, this particular TV ad buy is worth about $60,000, which is about 10 per cent of MPI’s total TV advertising budget. The ad is expected to run until the end of January.

A TV ad from a Crown corporation pointing out that insurance fraud costs every one of us money makes a lot of sense and it is long overdue. For that, MPI should be applauded. But an ad that relies on a sexist stereotype, of valley girls mindlessly shopping and spending money, does not make the grade. You can do better, MPI.

Shannon Sampert is a political scientist at the University of Winnipeg.

s.sampert@uwinnipeg.caTwitter: @paulysigh