Nadia is a loving homemaker. She lives for her family. She raises her kids on a steady diet of Arabic values. Her husband is a caring man who treats her with love and respect. Her family is her report card and she lives through her family’s achievements. She only wants to give her children the best, which is why she only buys the best quality products.
Do you really know a Nadia? I don’t. And yet this fictitious character seems to be all-pervasive in advertising. She takes different shapes and forms and sells everything from soap to sauces. She’s a fountainhead of kindness and generosity, and walks around with a million-watt smile permanently plastered on her face. And somehow, despite the fact that none of us have ever come across someone like her in reality, we still expect advertising to connect with ‘real’ women and build strong brands!
The reality is that the portrayal of women in advertising in our region has become painfully stereotypical. We’ve lost sight of the real Nadias. We’ve forgotten that they are real individuals with their own set of beliefs, aspirations and conflicts. If we start considering women as real individuals, we have a shot at really understanding what drives them – both as individuals and in the many roles they play as a mother, a wife and so on.
While a lot of people in advertising, especially women, wholeheartedly agree with this, we haven’t been providing viable alternatives to this approach. As an expat, I know I carry certain preconceived notions and beliefs. But I’ve learnt (the hard way) to lose that baggage. A classic case is our view on empowerment. Most expats believe that Saudi women are in need of empowerment. That might be true, but it’s not necessarily our idea of empowerment. They don’t want to burn the bra and they don’t want to be rebels. This is our stereotype of empowerment. This is our stereotype of ‘liberated’ women. That makes us just as fascist in our thinking as the people who drive the creation of the fictitious Nadias that rule our tellies.
Basically, the answer lies in re-orienting the way we think, irrespective of which side of the fence we currently sit upon. We need to stop imposing our views through the communication we create. We need to accept that ‘consumer-centric thinking’ is a sham, and that it’s just product or brand-centric thinking in disguise. We need to start thinking about our audience as individuals and not as homemakers or consumers. We need to focus on what they want, and not on what we want to sell them. We need to give up the fascist style of thinking that determines what ‘good advertising’ is.
This isn’t a revolutionary way of thinking and yet it’s rarely ever put into practice. And for anybody who thinks this is risky and prefers the safety of stereotypes, here’s an interesting fact – advertising in KSA has some of the lowest enjoyment and persuasion scores – across the board. I’m not making this up. It comes from the number crunching folks in quantitative research. I think the real Nadia is standing up and sending us a simple message – “Shape up or ship out”.
Kunal Joshi
Kunal Joshi is the Regional Director - Strategic Planning for Lowe Mena. Working largely on brands that engage women, he bravely shares his learnings with us, at the cost of being torn to shreds :)
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