Crown joins SeeHer’s female portrayal mission

24 Feb 2022 --- Global skin care company Crown Laboratories has teamed up with SeeHer, a collective of marketers, media organizations and industry influencers that are dedicated to showing accurate portrayals of women in advertising and supporting content. “It was an instant ‘yes’ for us to join in their mission!” says Nicole Watson, Director of Marketing, Therapeutic Skincare at Crown Laboratories.  

“Crown’s philosophy of ‘Skin Science for Life’ is a natural fit with this mission, as we design skin care solutions for all skin tones, types and ages,” Watson adds, sharing what spurred the company to join forces with SeeHer. “Our aim is to accurately reflect the broad range of consumers we service in all of our consumer communications. Partnering with SeeHer is another step in fostering this goal.” 

Click to EnlargeSource: Crown Laboratories/SeeHerThe duo’s initiative focuses on working to further promote the realistic portrayal of women by including those of all ages, abilities, ethnicities and sizes within visual media campaigns and programming, to allow all women to see themselves reflected in the world around them. By committing to more inclusive campaigns, Crown Laboratories strives to put women at the forefront and progress the media ecosystem to ensure it is more inclusive and equal.

Historically, there have been a number of issues with how women and girls are portrayed in the media and marketing, particularly in the beauty and personal care industry. “In decades past, women have been idealized and portrayed in ways that don’t accurately reflect the diversity (in every way) of womanhood,” says Watson. “In beauty and personal care particularly there’s often been an unattainable ‘standard’ that has left most women feeling unrepresented.” 

Today, these issues are still prevalent. “There have been major strides in the beauty and personal care industry to be more inclusive,” says Watson. However, despite progress, Watson shares: “No doubt, issues do still exist, and we can continue to work to overcome the unconscious bias that contributes to these inaccurate portrayals.” 

Changing the data

Crown Laboratories is therefore teaming up with SeeHer in support of its mission to portray women and girls as they really are. Changing these unconscious biases is at the core of SeeHer’s mission. They offer practical tools to help marketing teams develop benchmarks for success in these efforts. In particular, SeeHer spearheaded the development of the Gender Equality Measure (GEM), the first data-driven methodology for identifying gender bias in media which has become the industry standard for measuring portrayals in advertisements and programming. 

Click to EnlargeSeeHer measures diversity in the representation of women.Crown seeks to contribute to this mission through the partnership by leveraging GEM. “This will give us the ability to action against real data and continually improve our efforts to accurately portray females in our visual media,” says Watson.

Detailing what the company hopes to achieve through its partnership, Watson expresses: “We look forward to creating more meaningful content that makes women and girls feel recognized and empowered. We are very excited to be members of SeeHer and add to the collective power of world class brands that are also part of the mission.” 

The average age, race, body type, and other aspects of women depicted in media today still represent only a small fraction of the female population, according to SeeHer. The organization – a collective of marketers, media groups and industry influencers which launched in June 2016 in Washington DC – is committed to changing this. Its GEM methodology was quickly taken up as the media industry standard, which led to a global rollout in 2018. The following year, the movement expanded into new verticals of sports (SeeHer in Sports) and music (SeeHer Hear Her).

Crown is just the latest company to come onboard, hoping to portray women as they really are. The skin care company strives to adopt the principles set out by SeeHer in how it represents women and girls in its marketing campaigns. “We want our consumers to feel supported and included by our brands and therefore look to accurately reflect our consumer base across all visual touchpoints,” details Watson. “We are committed to including women of all ages, abilities, ethnicities and sizes within our visual media campaigns and other programs at Crown Laboratories.”

By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Journalist