Day two of Goafest began with a panel comprising Chandni Shah, COO, FCB Kinnect; Darshana Shah, head – marketing and customer experience, Aditya Birla Capital; Kailashnath Adhikari, business head, Sri Adhikari Brothers and MD, GovernenceNow; Rajdeepak Das, CCO, Publicis Groupe South Asia and chairperson Leo Burnett South Asia, and Ram Madhvani, filmmaker, founder and producer, Equinox Films, Ram Madhvani Films and Equinox Virtual, discuss how the advertising industry can make a positive impact on society.

Kranti Gada, managing committee member, IAA and founder, NeOwn.in, moderated the panel, and kickstarted it with a question about how the advertising industry is stuck in portraying stereotypical roles in its communication, while the consumers of those brands advertised are now progressive and breaking those stereotypes.

Darshana Shah believed that this stems from the grassroots because of the education system.

“All of us have learnt about occupations through books and charts. Most of these occupations would be male-dominated. So, it starts from there,” she said.

She went on to challenge agencies to promote their talent to leadership positions.

“I don’t think there are enough chief creative officers or equivalents in leadership positions. More males are dominating those positions because women fall off on the way. We need to have more women in leadership positions because women can nurture women,” she added. 

She also spoke about the bias for fair skin. 

“As a marketer, when I was in retail, our promoters wanted white or foreign skin (to market the products). It was a subconscious bias. That’s why see you women from Europe coming in for shoots. It’s in our culture (the need for white skin). It’s in the education and starts at home. We need to make a difference,” said Darshana Shah.

Explaining how she’s looking to make a difference, Darshana Shah said, “When you look at BFSI, there are many financially independent women, but what is portrayed and what is seen in many homes is that the decision maker is a male. We need to consciously make choices with our communication. Now only in the portrayal of the character, we went a step back and also looked for a female director for our ad shoot.” 

Giving both an advertising and film perspective, Madhvani said, “Sometimes I’m at the receiving end of such (stereotypical) scripts. In our movies or series, when we have two women on stage, they are most likely talking about men. We are changing that in the work we are creating. We are currently failing, but hopefully failing better than we did a few years ago.”

Adding a cultural context to what’s been prevailing in India, he added, “I’ve not met a single weak woman in India, but I’ve met weak men. In India, usually the women have the guchhas (keys) to the wealth in households. It’s normally a given.”

Das stated that he’s seeing changes happen, but the media industry has to correct an age-old problem. 

“The TV industry started about 40 years ago. If you look at the statistics, in 1951, the female education rate was 8.9%. In 2011, it grew to 64%. In 2021, it reached 92.5%. What didn’t change in six decades, changed drastically in 10. So change is happening,” he said.

He added that the new generation doesn’t see a ‘gender difference’. 

“I’m surrounded by my mother, wife and daughter. They are from three generations and I see a massive difference. My mom was stronger than my father but didn’t spell it out. My wife is stronger too. My daughter goes and kicks ass on the football field and beats the boys and is proud about it. So, in the next five to ten years, we are going to see changes (in the portrayal of women),” added Das.

He went on to quote a United Nations study about gender equality, which stated that it could take close to 285 years to achieve it.

“However, with the help of communications, we can use creativity, and have a target for us to reduce it to 30 years,” she added.

Adhikari stated that society as a whole needs to take up this cause of gender parity.

He said, “Each one of us irrespective of our gender can make meaningful careers. But what’s needed is a level playing field. Each gender should be creating skillsets which help their career evolve. There’s another report from the UN which says that several low to middle-income countries have lost 1 trillion from their GDP because women weren’t empowered with technology that helped them grow their skill sets. Another research mentioned that 37% of women globally do not have access to the internet. Given there’s banking at the doorstep and data available to use technology, it’s the onus upon the society to provide these facilities to all.”

Picking up on Das’ comment on Gen Z being ‘gender blind’, Chandni Shah said there’s been a massive shift among that generation.

“The people on digital platforms are extremely young. A lot of these Gen Zs are gender-blind. There’s been a massive shift because there’s global content that’s available to consume. Today, if you talk to a 20-year-old in office, they’re gender blind. Which is amazing and makes it interesting and easy to break stereotypes. If you don’t create such content it won’t relate with your audience,” she said. 

“The youth of today is changing. As an agency, the first step is to educate clients about this. Some of the clients who have success in the traditional way of working want to continue to work in the same way. So, we need to educate clients about these changes,” added Chandni Shah.

Adding to this, Das stated, “The most important thing is education about gender sensitivity. We don’t expect that to happen only in school. When new people join the organisation too, we have to educate them. We laugh about having less time to work on a brief. The moment it comes to us, we need to look at it and see what the viewer receives out of it.” 

He also spoke about how brands need to go a step back before marketing and look at product design.

“Marketing can only solve one side. Products need to be designed keeping women in mind. I don’t think any brand is talking about it. We have the power as a creative agency getting into client’s products and their financial structure. That’s our responsibility. We need to go to clients and ask if it's ergonomically designed for women. If it’s not designed for women, then we can’t do anything with the marketing,” he added.

Madhvani also spoke about how the late Nirupa Roy, and how she somehow subconsciously shaped the way women see themselves.

“She was the quintessential mother on movie screens. Mothers aspired to be her character.  She portrayed sacrifice, which was always written by men. So, it was on a con job. The moral choices that women have fascinates me. The tightrope between being a mother wife, sister, daughter and working woman. There are many roles women are playing every day and with a lot of fearlessness. Males are doing one role,” he said.

Answering a question about ‘item numbers’, “A lot of the producers in the early days were men. We would have had different stories if women controlled the storytelling narrative. Probably item numbers wouldn’t have existed. The storytelling became male-centric then,” he added.

Adhikari spoke about Damini, a show directed by his mother.

“My mother who comes from the same industry directed Damini which aired on Doordarshan. It was about a young girl wanting to become a political journalist and her struggle with that. It crossed 1,500 episodes. The first episode showed that the family was against her career choice, but she went ahead with it. Her first assignment was covering a riot situation at a train station. So, it’s sad that 30 years later, instead of progressing, we’re somewhere regressing. The majority of the shows in prime time for the urban markets are showing women in distress. What pleasure do we get from this? Are we vulnerable to ratings,” he asked.

The panel ended with Gada engaging the panellists in a rapid-fire and asking about the one change they wanted to see:

Madhvani: I want good washrooms for women at shoots. Men can go anywhere but women can’t. 

Das: We don’t see women sportspeople in our sports ads. Very few brands are doing this. Why can’t we have our great leaders across cricket/wrestling/hockey show up? 

Chandni Shah: What annoys me is that they don’t show women in smart and humourous roles. Last year, at Cannes I had a conversation with the head of Google Australia. They challenged the phrase 'creativity is king' and made it 'creativity rules'. That’s the way to go. 

Darshana Shah: Women cannot be always shown as strong and courageous. This is a constant demand from society. We have extremes role models from Nirupa Roy to the strong woman. One CMO started taking meetings right from the hospital room, we need to stop this.

Adhikari: I believe that as a society we have to bridge the gap. There are digital and social divides. It’s all about mindsets at the end of the day. The desire to have a male child was the reason for the population explosion. That’s the epicentre of it, and that mentality needs to be curbed.