It used to be that when you thought of a woman in business the image that came to mind was a dark-blue-suit-clad young woman wearing simple pumps and eyeglasses, hair pulled back, toting a large briefcase (after all, didn’t all women in business wear blue suits with pumps and carry briefcases?).
The images were indelibly engraved on people’s minds because of stock photos, images for creative assignments like advertising.
The Greater Wilmington Business Journal and its sister publication WILMA magazine recently held a roundtable on images of women in marketing with local women in the marketing and advertising fields.
Participants were: HILARY BRADLEY, senior graphic designer at TGK; SUSAN JOHNSON, founder of Sakisaki Marketing; SARAH BON, co-owner of Bon’s Eye Marketing; ANGI ISRAEL, managing partner of Plan A Advertising; and AMY THARRINGTON, principal and co-founder of Maximum Design & Advertising.
The discussion comes a year after Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg of LeanIn.Org., a women’s empowerment nonprofit, joined forces with Getty Images to create the Lean In Collection, “a library of images devoted to the powerful depiction of women, girls and the people who support them.”
The new images show that women in power and the people who support them come in all ages, ethnic backgrounds, professions and are multidimensional, actively involved in life as well as business.
Bradley says that in the past, trying to find a stock photo of an empowered woman netted “junk.” And if you made the mistake of searching for an image of an empowered business woman, you’d get an image of a woman in a business suit with her hand on her hip or a call center staffer tethered forever to her headset and smiling in a customer service kind of way. The Lean In photos show women laughing, exercising, wearing hard hats at work and engaged in other activities. There’s also wide variety in their age, ethnicity, clothing style and other characteristics.
Johnson used to work in the conservative financial industry in Boston and said geography and the industry you are targeting can play a role in how people are portrayed. The Wilmington area and its proximity to the shoreline, as well as a tech orientation, make it more casual than other areas of the country, she said.
Tharrington finds it “curious” that Sandberg chose to change the images of this group by changing stock photos rather than cover images, since more than half of young women use magazine cover models as the basis of an acceptable self-image, potentially affecting women’s self-esteem. If Sandberg wants to create buzz and make a difference, she could push the anti-Photoshop or airbrush movement that assumes women are imperfect and their images must be modified to be acceptable, Tharrington said.
Johnson pointed out Sandberg’s stock photo overhaul “put a stake in the ground” in the discussion around female images, giving some high visibility to the issue.
While many of her clients hadn’t complained about the images available mostly for free in the past, Israel said good stock images were hard to find.
Aside from the commentary the former images made about women’s place in the workforce, they also made inferences – intentionally or not – about other female attributes. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has made inroads on the images related to body size, for instance, Johnson said.
It’s interesting to note, Bon said, that in addition to the images, the actual search terms used to find them can be telling. In many instances, the terms used for men don’t describe their physical attributes, while women may be called beautiful or other descriptive terms.
Roundtable participants seem to differ on some aspects of the campaign’s success.
Bradley said some of the images, particularly those showing women with dreadlocks and tattoos, might be too extreme. Johnson said those images might, however, be representative of women in business in cities like Seattle but not somewhere else.
Key to all of this talk of image, most of the roundtable participants agreed, was finding the perfect image to resonate with a target audience. Sometimes, as in the case of a television ad for fast food that features a close-up of a female licking her fingers suggestively, the representation of women may be used to simply sell sex.
When asked if they would refuse to work with a client who wanted to portray women in a way contrary to their personal beliefs, would these marketing and advertising leaders refuse?
The answer isn’t an easy one. Bon said it depended on the client’s ideas and purpose in selecting certain images. “You can’t force a company to change that, but hopefully you can help educate them,” she said.
Bradley said she was impressed when her supervisor asked her if she would have a problem with working for a client involved in a topic that has sparked national controversy. The topic wasn’t offensive, she said, and she was impressed with her supervisor’s sensitivity to her needs. Israel said she has asked her employers if it would be challenging for them to work on certain accounts.
The women say they would make a decision on a case-by-case basis.
Bon said she was curious to know how many of the Lean In Collection images have been downloaded. Bradley said she’d like them to be more accessible, particularly for clients on a limited budget; some of the collection’s photos cost several hundred dollars, depending on the size needed.
It can often take days to find the right image for a client. Several roundtable participants suggest that it may be more cost-effective to host a photo session to get the perfect image.
“I just hope there are more stakes in the ground,” Israel said, adding the evolution of working moms will also be mirrored in images.
