Ep 13: Portraying Love Inclusively in Marketing
Shownotes
In this episode, Joyann breaks down how love can be portrayed inclusively in marketing, both in terms of Valentine's Day and the mundanity of everyday love.
You can watch the podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meAs6ey_Zhw&ab_channel=JoyannBoyce
Useful links:
https://www.arimacompany.com/blog/how-are-you-portraying-love-in-marketing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z0jfP2gCIs&ab_channel=JohnLewis
https://www.olebmedia.com/how-to-market-to-people-with-disabilities/
You can find Joyann at: https://twitter.com/joyannboyce
Transcript
Ep 13 transcript
[00:00:00] Joyann Boyce: Welcome to the Marketing Made Inclusive Podcast. I am your host, Joyann Boyce. On this podcast, we're gonna discuss all things inclusive marketing from persona creation campaigns, and even some of the mishaps we see in the media. Tune in and let me know your thoughts on how we can make inclusive marketing the industry standard.
[00:01:06] Welcome and welcome back to the Marketing Made Inclusive Podcast. I am your host, Joyann Boyce, and today as we're coming to the somewhat end of the so-called Marketed Love month, can you tell that I'm a fan and not a fan of Valentine's Day. I've been thinking quite a bit on the representation of love in marketing and how we portray the different types of love.
[00:01:32] I think it's very well known that love and perception of love and how it's portrayed in marketing is a strong selling point. It's amazing storyteller, and it kind of is this one thing that almost every human in some form or another has experienced. However, when you look at the love being portrayed between families, that seems to fit a certain mold, and I believe marketers, brands, companies are missing opportunities to continue to use love as that strong connection point, but portray families in the many varieties and the ways that we have it within society.
[00:02:15] I've been trying to think of valentine's Day commercials or ones that centered love in any way, actually, not just Valentine's Day, that featured families that were of the same gender or unconventional families. And not that many come to mind, not that many iconic ones. They are there and they are growing.
[00:02:35] However, recently I believe it was in a retail store where they were showing different types of families and different types of love. Any scenario that had a Black family in it, it would be a single parent. But any other family would be a nuclear family, for lack of a better phrase. A nuclear family: two parents, one kid.
[00:02:59] Um, I've also worked with some clients in the past where they had great representation of queer couples, however, imagery that got used the most was of the white male queer couples. And although they had these other imagery in the bank, their team and their staff of this quite large marketing team were also all naturally selecting certain imagery.
[00:03:23] So when thinking about love and thinking about portraying love within marketing and within campaigns or within tv, I think that a lot of people get limited. By the past, by the history of what we were told in the past, what love looks like, and don't really dive into what love is and how we understand it as humans.
[00:03:45] And then representing that within the content we create. I can think of so many instances where a campaign or an ad, or even TV, let's take it beyond, can be reimagined. When you look at love through a different narrative, when you look at love instead of the typical nuclear family of two parents and a kid or two children who are most likely white living in suburbia or whatever fancy area of London, and you start to explore how love can be looked at through queer couples,
[00:04:27] adopting or even carrying their own child and decisions to make that and how that can impact product essentially. Um, there's so much narrative there that has been yet to been explored and I think a lot of brands, mainly the ones focusing on parents, can really dive into these areas and really show love in a whole new way.
[00:04:52] There was recently a campaign, I'm trying to recall the brand, it showed love in a way that you don't tend to see a lot while also highlighting an organisation. The story was of a white man, um, looking and trying to learn how to roller skate. You don't get much context at the start. You're just like, why is he trying to, not roller skate skateboard?
[00:05:18] Why is he trying to skateboard? Why is this middle-aged white man falling off his ass and trying to learn how to skateboard. And you can see this effort and this care and it's like, okay, he's really trying. Um, and then halfway through the story you see that they are looking to adopt or foster a little girl who loves to skateboard.
[00:05:40] And I think that was a beautiful representation of how love or wanting to love or expressing love is shown in the family dynamic, but in a way that's somewhat unconventional to show the effort that's being put in before adopting or fostering a child, and that story, that narrative, the effort of before a child comes into your life.
[00:06:03] Links out to so many dynamics within marketing, so many products. If you just think about the pre-baby industry, it's huge. There's so many things that you need and so many apps, so many tools. I do not have children myself, but I've seen how it's changed over the years when I've seen my friends have kids or seen my goddaughter grow up.
[00:06:27] There's, there's opportunity for creativity there, and I feel like the industry is being slow to change, slow to represent families in the multi dynamical way we see them, the multi dynamical way they exist. Uh, that particular campaign was related to fostering and encouraging people to consider fostering, while I believe promoting a, um, supermarket brand.
[00:06:53] However, I don't think it needs to be limited to the campaign. It can just be limited to the story of narrative. I wanna challenge marketers as we're wrapping up February and we're going into the rest of the year, there's a lot of marketers that are gonna be starting to maybe put thought into Christmas or put thought into, um, Valentine's Day next year.
[00:07:19] I know it seems far away, but how can you take the emotion. That you're trying to portray, love, and represent that in an inclusive and experimental, or even an inclusive and mundane way. I, I take back the word experimental. How can you represent love in a campaign, in a creative, in a brief, in an ad, in an inclusive and mundane way?
[00:07:53] Because I feel like that's missing. Love is every day and different people experience it in everyday dynamic, but it's lacking that diversity, that inclusivity. I would love to see love represented in a mundane way for a queer Black woman, in a mundane way for a disabled man, and how the emotion of love can evoke anything.
[00:08:30] How the emotion of love can evoke so many feelings and be related to so many aspects of life that are mundane. How there, there are too many ideas come into mind right now, but I'll go back to the supermarket and kind of shopping and that experience of families exploring supermarkets, shopping together, how some families are buying five different types of pasta for everyone, and how you can show that, you know, that family can be any dynamic, but the experience of showing love through food, showing love through caring for someone else and relating that back to a family that is
[00:09:18] an unconventional dynamic of same sex, couple, of a disabled, uh, person or family, or just, there's so many intersections that love can be represented. And I've said it, I've said it a few times now. I think I'm going off on a tangent here. I want to see the love within families, within relationships be inclusive.
[00:09:46] And when I say inclusive, I mean representing something that is beyond the conventional. I mean representing same sex couples, I mean representing women of darker skin tones. I mean, representing relationships that are unconventional. Maybe even explore, I don't know if society's ready for representation of non-monogamous relationships on TV and in commercials.
[00:10:10] But anyways, I digress. I mean, representing families that have become families in different ways. It could be, you know, parents that have adopted a kid or families that aren't together anymore, but still operate as a family. Let's move away from a narrative that, you know, divorced parents don't love each other.
[00:10:35] Explore what divorce would look like in other scenarios, in other dynamics, in other cultures,
[00:10:44] and let's see how we can do that in a mundane way. I know mundane seems to be challenging the creativity, but a lot of the times when we see. Uh, disabled couple, for example, is always championed in a way that, oh my goodness, they are loving and they are still about to have a kid. And it's such a huge challenge for them.
[00:11:04] And, oh, this story is gonna make you feel like really either sorry for them or feel sad, rather than just, Hey, I am disabled person. I am having a child. I use this product. I love this product. I love my child. Hence I use this product. That's what I mean in regards to being mundane. This has been a tangent of a thought I had and I personally feel many ways about love Month and Valentine's Day, but I see the benefits of it when you're trying to express an emotion and having society on the same page.
[00:11:48] I think that's something that commercialised months and days have a way of doing. Everyone's aware of that in some way, shape or form, whether they celebrate it or not. It's a great opportunity to tap into that emotional awareness, but also it's a great opportunity to understand that, you know, not everyone is up for it.
[00:12:13] But that's another exploration I think. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day are days that I've seen a lot of brands shift in their marketing approach, giving people the option to opt out. I think that is an important factor as well. Um, I've seen a few brands mainly around, um, Mother's Day and Father's Day, but I think it could apply to Valentine's Day as well, where before they start, sending out all their content and their campaign,
[00:12:41] they give people the option to opt out, and not opt out completely of their mailing list in their newsletter, no marketer really wants that. However, they give them the option to opt out for that particular content, that particular campaign that may be triggering for the individual. And I think that's important as well.
[00:12:58] So to wrap up, let's make love mundane and inclusive and remember that even as society's on that page, that love page, to give people the option to opt out. Feel free to message me, contact, and I would love to know your thoughts about the podcast. Share it with as many people as you like. The more we're talking about inclusive marketing, the more that people know about it, the more that you shared this podcast
[00:13:32] the more we can make a change, you know, make inclusive marketing industry standard, make every marketer conscious, aware, and actively participating. So thank you for tuning in to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast, and see you next week.
