On December 20, 2011, WLN India hosted a workshop in Mumbai on “Depicting Women Effectively in Communication” which was well attended by staff across the IPG companies in India (McCann, DraftFCB and Lowe Lintas). High-profile speakers at the event included Santosh Desai, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Futurebrand India Ltd; Dr. A.L. Sharada, Director, Population First; and KV Shridhar, a respected creative professional.
Half of India is young and impressionable. And as image-makers, we pretty much define how these young people will think when they grow up. Long after our ad has run on TV and been uploaded to an online archive, it is accessible at the click of a mouse. Forever. That 30-second commercial is actually timeless. It lives on for eternity. So if we always depict a girl child as tender and a boy child as tough, we’re perpetuating a stereotype that may have outlived its era. If we depict women as either saints or sirens instead of a realistic mix of both, we’re creating avatars that simply don’t exist! All it takes is a little awareness running as a background track in our minds.