Women behind the wheel still have no place in advertising, unless they play the role of wives, housewives and mothers. If it is about representing a person who is fond of cars, with a passion for adrenaline and with a favorable economic condition to access a new lifestyle, they are not the ones.
In automotive brand advertisements, men are the ones who convey stability, independence and power. Women only look out for the well-being, comfort and safety of their family. While they are doing well.
When I put the phrase ‘women and cars’ into Google, the first thing that comes out are images of them in underwear, bathing suits or short shorts posing provocatively next to or on top of a vehicle. While looking for ‘men and cars’, the perspective changes completely. They, in suits and with dark glasses, exude authority and dominance, some even have an adornment woman at their side just to make clear their level of command.
The contradiction between the two pairs was something that caught the attention of Mercedes-Benz. The brand, after doing this search, realized that advertising in the sector not only distorted the relationship that women really have with cars, but that the search results were a worrying reflection of the stereotype that exists in society.
“It was a shock for us,” says Thalía Castro, Marketing Director of Mercedes-Benz Mexico. “As brands we are normalizing the stereotype in advertising, we have to recognize it, so we decided to do this exercise and check that the industry is not doing things well.”
The search was the first step to generate ‘Let’s change the image’, an advertising campaign that seeks to break gender stereotypes by questioning who washes their car in a bikini or who drives in their underwear.
“In the automotive industry there is a hypersexualization of women, it is a reified representation that does not represent reality at all, it is something that should not continue to happen,” says Carlos Sandoval, managing lead of Publicis Emil México, creative agency of the campaign.
According to the study ‘AdReaction: getting gender right’ prepared by Kantar, 76% of women do not feel identified with the image that advertising shows of them. Even 40% have had the need to change their appearance and 50% to achieve work success to fit into the type of society that brands seek to impose in their commercials.
To change this perception, Mercedes-Benz and Publicis Emil México invited women to take their pictures with their vehicles and share their photos on social networks with the hashtag #WomenyAutos. “We wanted to hack the algorithm and modify the search results with new images,” explains Thalía Castro.
The campaign, which received more than 550 photos, achieved conversations with more than 90% positive sentiment, reached more than six million people, had more than 100,000 likes and 10 million impressions.
Who drives in Mexico?
In 2019, an investigation by Mercado Libre revealed that 52% of car purchases worldwide are made by women. At Mercedes-Benz, about 50% of the cars they sell are bought by women. And despite this, they rarely appear in advertising.
“In general, women are not in the ads and the few that do appear are portrayed in a different way than reality,” says Adriana Olmedo, group director of innovation and talent engagement at JeffreyGroup.
“For brands in the automotive industry, we do not drive, we do not know how to change a tire, we go to the workshop without understanding what happens to the vehicle. None represent a leadership position, for example, they only drive vans because they take children, never a sports car, that’s for men ”, adds the specialist in diversity and inclusion.
According to the study ‘Data, diversity and representation for a more inclusive advertising in Latin America’, by Facebook, 82% of the people who appear in car ads in Mexico are men, only 18% are women, who assume the roles of wives and mothers.
“In this and other categories (such as financial services and technology), the male character is the main one, implying that they are the ones who make the decisions to buy products of greater value and satisfaction”, says Marco Casarin, CEO of Facebook Mexico.
But it’s a lie. According to Mercado Libre research, 83% of women influence decision-making when purchasing a vehicle for a member of their family.
Machismo or market identification?
Cristian Rocha, co-founder and creative director of Made, does not think that car brands are excluding women from their advertisements (or misrepresenting them) because they replicate gender stereotypes, but because they are focused on a specific consumer profile.
“The same product tells you who to put in the ads. After doing a detailed research, the brands know which cars are the most bought by men and the profile that they have, so they decide who to put. The same thing happens with women, if there are classic cars for moms, then you represent one, but there will be sports cars for them and they should also be in the advertisement ”, explains the creative who has been working with car brands like Volkswagen for more than 15 years , Renault, Fiat and Jeep.
Rocha agrees that sex does not sell and that women should be represented in advertisements in a different way. But, he warns that a mistake would be to force the target of the brands to get on a trend, since this will only end up harming it.
The JeffreyGroup specialist explains that today women are not willing to tolerate sarcastic ads or that make fun of social movements, but they are not going to believe an opportunistic brand that tries to break stereotypes to increase its sales.
“It is our responsibility as experts to change the discourse, not to fall into the easy resource and always question whether what is going to be reflected corresponds to reality. And to achieve this, it is key that the work teams are diverse, ”says Adriana Olmedo.
Made’s creative director says that so far none of the brands he works with have asked him to include women in their ads to meet a gender quota.
At Mercedes-Benz and Publicis Emil México, gender is an important issue, which is why both the automotive brand and the advertising agency pay special attention to equity and balance. This does not mean that there is an imposition of quotas, but that everyone (men and women) analyzes the content before seeing the light to ensure that it conveys the correct message.
