This study investigates the impact of Sephora's femvertising brand campaign on consumer perceptions in the beauty industry, with a specific focus on brand image, the effectiveness of femvertising ...advertisements, and potential influences on future cosmetic brand choices. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 participants in Türkiye, and thematic analysis revealed significant insights. The findings highlight Sephora's significant influence on participants' understanding and engagement with the brand. Participants recognized Sephora as a well-known brand, attributing it to effective marketing efforts, collaborations with influencers, and a strong social media presence. The study also revealed diverse perceptions and preferences regarding beauty standards and product usage. Participants acknowledged Sephora's unique qualities, such as premium products and a pleasant in-store experience, while price was mentioned as a limiting factor. Notably, the specific Sephora ad, "the unlimited power of beauty," resonated strongly with participants, emphasizing self-acceptance, inclusivity, and brand activism. Overall, the study underscores the importance of brand awareness, strategic marketing, inclusivity, and empowering messages in shaping consumer perceptions, fostering brand activism, and influencing future brand choices within the competitive beauty industry. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of femvertising in consumer behavior and provide valuable insights for marketers and practitioners in the beauty industry.
This paper investigates the impact of femvertising (female empowerment advertising). More specifically, it hypothesizes that femvertising (vs. traditional portrayals of females in advertising) will ...reduce ad reactance among a female target audience, and that this in turn will enhance ad and brand attitudes. The results of three experimental studies indicate that this is indeed the case, and that the results hold across print and digital media, for five different product categories, and for femvertising focusing on challenging female stereotypes in terms of physical characteristics as well as the roles and occupations used to portray women in advertising. Although previous studies of the effects of female portrayals tend to focus on social comparison and self‐identity, the current paper considers the role of psychological reactance to (more or less) stereotypical portrayals in explaining these effects. The results suggest that marketers have much to gain from adapting a more proactive and mindful approach to the female portrayals they use in their ads.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Femvertising messages are advertisements aimed at empowering women through pro-female messages, and they are celebrated by the industry. But recent critical research has found femvertisements that ...use postfeminist discourses, which both incorporate and repudiate feminist ideals, neutralizing feminism's political force. Using qualitative (N = 26) and quantitative content analyses (N = 106), this study analyzed postfeminist articulations in award-winning femvertisements. Results showcase six commonly utilized discourses and elements of postfeminism: commodity feminism, individualization, self-surveillance, a new lens on the embrace of femininity, confidence cult(ure), and love your body. Two studies show how and how often disempowering discourses appear in female empowerment advertising.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
The multifold increase in influencer marketing has sparked debates about the mechanism of influencer marketing on social media. Although the research on influencer marketing is escalating, its ...integration with other forms of advertising to facilitate positive outcomes is unexplored. This article introduces the new research concept of femluencing, which is influencer marketing coupled with femvertising. This article attempts to integrate influencing with femvertising and provides an outline of femluencing by integrating the aspects of femvertising and influencer marketing. In addition to laying the foundation of femluencing, 25 social media influencers (SMIs) were interviewed to identify their perceptions about utilizing femluencing. The study develops a model from the past literature and responses from our interviews with SMIs.
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5.
Female power portrayals in advertising Kordrostami, Melika; Laczniak, Russell N.
International journal of advertising,
09/2022, Volume:
41, Issue:
7
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Although stereotypical female portrayals are still common in advertisements, in recent years it appears there has been a move toward portraying women in powerful positions in ads. This research ...investigates the recent trend in advertising that portrays women in positions of power and offers a typology of female power dimensions in ads. Building on previous literature on social power, feminine power, and current trends in advertising, a typology for female power is proposed and verified using two studies. In the first study, data from a pile sort of current print ads is collected and analyzed by cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. In the second study, semi-structured interviews are employed to verify the proposed typology. Results verified that receivers perceive female power in advertisements in the following power dimensions: sexual power, expert power, family power, and empowerment (including athletic power).
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This study examined the potential for a new area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) washing: gender equality. Companies are increasingly recognized for advertisements promoting gender equality, ...termed “femvertisements.” However, it is unclear whether companies that win femvertising awards actually support women with an institutionalized approach to gender equality. A quantitative content analysis was performed assessing company leadership team listings, annual reports, CSR reports, and CSR websites of 61 US-based companies (31 award winners and 30 non-winning competitors) to compare the prevalence of internal and external gender-equality CSR activities of companies that have (versus have not) won femvertising awards. When controlling for number of employees and annual revenue, award-winning companies committed to more internal efforts that support women than non-award-winning companies. However, no significant differences were found in the number of external efforts or representation in female leadership between companies with and without award-winning femvertisements. Overall, a majority of award-winning companies (81%) engaged in less than ten of the possible 23 gender-equality CSR activities, suggesting these companies’ female empowerment commercials were often not in line with their broader CSR activities. While more research is needed in this area, we propose the term “fempower-washing” to describe CSR-washing in the context of gender equality.
The increased visibility of gender issues in society has inspired a trend among marketing companies: female empowerment. Marketers are working with clients and developing advertising that advocates ...equality for female consumers. Yet, despite this trend for femvertising, little progress has been made toward gender equality for the women working inside the creative advertising industry. This article looks at the inequality problem and considers whether it stems from women’s thwarted attempts to establish a leadership identity within the strongly-gendered cultures in which they are subject to established practices. Thirty female creatives from the U.S., U.K., and mainland Europe were interviewed and, based on these findings, I present three overarching themes: vision, voice, and visibility. Together, they represent the challenges women experience in developing a leadership identity but also inspire opportunities for agencies to increase the influence of female creatives. If the advertising industry’s claims to represent society are to be taken seriously, it must move beyond empowering female consumers to also empowering its female creatives.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
O presente estudo tem como objetivo discutir se e como o uso do feminismo no marketing, no âmbito do femvertising, pode transmitir ideias de empoderamento feminino e promover uma representação da ...mulher na publicidade que fuja dos estereótipos. Para tal, são analisados três comerciais que contaram com a colaboração da consultoria de marketing feminista Think Eva: “#EAíTáPronta?” e “Isso é Pra Mim” da marca Avon, e “Ser Mulher Faz Toda a Diferença” da Gillette Venus. A metodologia usada foi o estudo de caso, empregando, para análise individual dos comerciais, um modelo de leitura crítica da publicidade; e, para uma análise geral dos dados, as etapas de redução, exibição e conclusão/verificação. Os resultados indicam que os atributos do corpo feminino, as características comportamentais das mulheres e o incentivo ao empoderamento feminino são as questões mais revistas nos comerciais e diferem parcialmente das mensagens transmitidas na publicidade dita convencional.
There is an increasing presence of 'femvertising' in the media; an advertising style that highlights women's talents, centers themes on pro-woman messaging and counters stereotyping. However, no ...systematic attempt has been made to establish the reasons leading to its increasing social acceptance. This article identifies the major factors leading to femvertising: (1) growing activism around the better representation of women in advertising; (2) brand activism and conscious capitalism; (3) the criticism of corporate and commodity feminism; (4) increasing awareness of gender stereotyping; (5) and increasing scrutiny by regulatory bodies on gender role representations in advertising. We conclude that femvertising is a phenomenon resulting from the combined effect of the five factors above. We propose that future studies in femvertising should address the remaining issues of lack of authenticity, dilution of feminist discourse, interconnection with social movements as well as linkages to increased representation of women in advertising, both to construct a full picture of the current state of femvertising and to understand its future configuration in a shifting social and ideological environment.
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El presente trabajo aborda el tema de las comunicaciones comerciales en torno a la rememoración del Día Internacional de la Mujer. Puntualmente se estudian las publicaciones realizadas por empresas ...de tres sectores esenciales de la economía: supermercados, estaciones de servicios y entidades financieras en Argentina en 2021. Se trabajó sobre un corpus de 72 documentos posteados en Instagram y en Facebook vinculados al 8M. Desde la perspectiva del análisis de contenidos se estudiaron las imágenes, videos y textos a través de una codificación propuesta a través del marco teórico y ajustada en función de los datos ofrecidos por el corpus. Los resultados llevan a considerar la identificación de prácticas de comunicación comercial que se reconocen como propias del femvertising, aunque se identifica un comportamiento dispar dependiendo del sector comercial de la empresa que emite el mensaje.
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