Meredith Corporation’s brands will become the first digital and print partners of the Association of National Advertisers’ #SeeHer initiative to eliminate bias against women in advertising and media. The publisher’s commitment includes publicizing #SeeHer across the company’s editorial content, which includes PEOPLE, InStyle and Better Homes & Gardens.
The announcement will be made at the 2018 ANA Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando this week. In this interview with Beet.TV prior to the event, Meredith’s Chief Marketing & Data Officer, Alysia Borsa, says the partnership is truly organic.
“Demonstrating and showing gender equality and accurately representing women is who we are,” Borsa says. “It’s how our brands have been successful. It’s what we’ve been doing for years and years. It’s not only the right thing to do but it’s made us successful as a business.”
The ANA launched #SeeHer in the summer of 2016 to encourage a more accurately portrayal of all girls and women in media. It uses the data-tracking Gender Equality Measure (GEM) to identify best-in-class advertising and programming that supports girls and women, according to the ANA’s news release. The goal is to improve the authentic representation of women by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote.
Meredith brands are in the process of being reviewed for GEM certification, according to a company news release. In the release, ANA CEO Bob Liodice said, “Meredith is a long-standing valued partner of the ANA, and we are delighted about its commitment to expand our #SeeHer movement’s message on such an enormous scale. We are excited about the potential and look forward to fully amplifying the reach in 2019.”
Meredith’s content reaches 175 million people monthly, 110 million of them women, and 86% of all U.S. women.
“It’s organic for who we are,” says Borsa. “We’re also going to bring this initiative to the American consumers. We’re going to make it more than just a BtoB initiative. We’re going to make it a BtoC initiative.”
Public outreach will begin in December across all of Meredith’s print, digital and television holdings. “We’re going to share that with our consumers to help them become more aware of what this means. They will see editors’ letters that talk directly to the consumer about the #SeeHer initiatives, both again in print and in digital. And we’re also going to be talking about it through our local TV stations as well. It’s direct communications from our editors to consumers about what #SeeHer is and what it’s going to mean to them,” Borsa says.
You are watching Gender Equality Means Business, a Beet.TV series presented by Meredith Corporation in partnership with #SeeHer. For additional videos from the series, please visit this page.
