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Marketing Advertising Gender Equality

Why is the marketing industry so far behind at connecting with the dads of today?

By Zoe Harris, marketing director

July 6, 2016 | 4 min read

Whilst other people binge on box sets of Games of Thrones, Breaking Bad or Homeland, I’ve just rather tragically watched five hours of Coronation Street and Gogglebox on catch-up.

dad advertising

What fascinated me almost as much as the building tension between David Platt and Kylie was viewing premium ad breaks, seeing adverts in context in the real world as opposed to through the filter of our trade press.

With Father's Day still front of mind, I have to say I was actually quite shocked by what I saw – or more accurately what I didn’t see.

Yes, there are some great examples of ‘dadvertising’ as showcased recently by The Drum, but on the whole dads are still represented in stereotypical roles, larking about or doing a bit of garden lawn maintenance.

In the 10 ad breaks I watched, I saw women ‘set free’ by cordless vacuums, adding ‘excitement’ to their life by putting horseradish in the sausage casserole and being ‘adventurous’ letting their children splash in the mud with an amazing scent of summer at hand in their fabric conditioner.

No dads doing child caring or household chores. Not one.

There are two things that trouble me about this.

Firstly, as an industry, don’t we have some responsibility to not stereotype or commit unconscious bias in the advertisements we produce? If we don’t do it in real life, is it morally ok to do it in our work?

Secondly, aren’t we missing a massive trick in maximising commercial success for the brands that we work on?

Because here’s the thing. As we marketers all know, there is often a huge gap between our realities and our perceptions of ourselves. It is by appealing to our sense of self, rather than our reality that can be hugely compelling and differentiating for brands.

Trinity Mirror data shows that for Modal Britain (what we call the middle 50 per cent of the country), dads do 37 per cent of the household tasks.

However, when asked, dads claim that they do 52 per cent of traditional female household chores such as vacuuming, washing and cooking.

Whilst the difference between the claimed and actual percentages are not insignificant, perhaps more important is the symbolical inference we can make from the claimed figure of 52 per cent.

Dads either believe, or want us to think, that they do half of the housework and childcare, and by inference are now equal partners in the home.

If we know the most effective thing brands can do is tap into an emotional benefit, why are more brands not using this insight to lead the way targeting mums and dads, instead of the tired HWCH definition and shorthand that surely belongs to a different age?

Because if perception is reality, our portrayal is far removed from the reality of today’s dads.

Zoe Harris is group marketing director at Trinity Mirror. Follow her on Twitter @MarketingZoe

Marketing Advertising Gender Equality

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