It was 2004, and Jess Weiner, founder and CEO of Talk to Jess, found herself in the middle of New York City’s Times Square. She was looking up at a campaign she helped to make happen; Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. But what happened next is what launched her career. A younger and older woman stood next to each other, commenting on the image of a woman with cellulite, expressing opposing feelings. Jess overheard their comments, and knew she was on to something.

It’s no wonder why brands like Barbie, Mattel, Disney, Johnson and Johnson and a host of others, have talked to Jess.

We had our own chance to talk with Jess about the one question she has for PromaxBDA attendees, how everyone can play a role in changing narratives, and what she wishes everyone knew.

DAILY BRIEF: Can you give us a preview of your upcoming session at PromaxBDA: The Conference?

WEINER: I am going to be talking about the tangible steps that marketers can take at various levels of industry so whether you’re CMO or at an entry-level space, what are the tangible steps that we can take as a marketer to help make sure that we’re creating the most inclusive, most diverse content, not for tokenization purposes but for business purposes. How do we become more aware communicators around where leading-edge conversations are going and how are we staying connected to our own biases, and making sure that we’re integrating all that we’re learning about the need for diversity and inclusion and bringing it down to business scenarios.

DAILY BRIEF: I’ve worked in entertainment marketing. I’ve seen how women are made slimmer for the show open. It seems that everyone plays a part in how people are seen. Is that correct?

WEINER: Yes, that’s exactly the scenario I’m talking about, because it’s the holistic effort that’s going to need to happen in order for us to change representation of the whole. But I think you bring up a really good point which is that there are multiple stakeholders — including editors, copywriters, art directors and producers — that touch a piece of content in various ways before it goes out to the consumer.

Before we can expect anybody to speak up, I think we have to first engage in what is implicit bias, and understand the sensitivity around cultural issues and how it affects an audience.

People need to understand the issue before they can be expect to speak up in a professional setting. In the work that I do as a consultant, I often speak with producers or writers’ rooms or editors about retouching and airbrushing images. You first have to get people to engage in that conversation, and then you have to empower people to speak up. Everybody’s afraid they’re going to get fired.

But there’s some political capital to speaking up about this. I want to help people understand the business reason why. I want to prepare them not just on the emotional or social reasons, but on the business reason. Clients I’ve worked with like Dove or Mattel, who did go deeper in the way they represent women in their advertising and in their products, made a significant amount of money from those choices.

Consumers are really looking for more reality, more authenticity and more representation so it behooves us, I think, to look first at ourselves and our work and say “Is that slimming down really necessary? Am I perpetuating a thin ideal that women are going to find unachievable, and therefore contribute to this low self-esteem epidemic? Also, creatively, is it really buying the message any equity? Is it moving into a deeper connection with our audience, or am I just replicating what I’ve seen done before? I think as an artist and a marketer that can be an inspiring conversation versus feeling like “Oh my gosh, I’ve got the weight of the world to change all the social issues.” I don’t think that’s realistic for us to expect.

DAILY BRIEF: I worked on Black in America for five years as its promo voice, and I remember when the show first premiered, maybe eight years ago. That series brought to the table a conversation we weren’t having about being black in America, at least for this generation. And if you look at today, black social issues are at the forefront of conversation. So there really is, as Malcolm Gladwell says, a tipping point. But it all begins with starting the conversation, and at some point the people start rising up. Do you think we’ve reached that as it relates to the work you’re doing?

WEINER: I think we’re in the middle of a tipping point right now. I think because of social media in particular, for all of its cons, there are a ton of pros. And the big pro is that it’s allowed us to be connected faster and deeper around this issue of representation. We’re able to call out brands who don’t work within that space. We’re able to call out brands who [subscribe to] political constructs around race and gender and sexual orientation, and things that have marginalized people for decades.

I think we’re at the tipping point because I think our social currency is catching up with our financial currency in business, which is, this consumer, especially the millennial audience and Generation Z coming behind them, they are a attuned to a minion-driven business model. They want to see businesses who are engaged from a corporate ethos standpoint in a responsible way from a product and messaging standpoint. I feel like it’s like putting your head in the sand as a business to ignore this tipping point.

What it means, though, to your point, is that it still isn’t critical mass yet. It’s just the tipping point. We’re at the stage where the conversation has language around it, we have platforms to talk about it. You and I are able to get into this conversation so easily. So it’s there. We haven’t had the benefit of another decade of the work to show all of the business case studies. But we will! So my question to our PromaxBDA audience is who’s going to be on the right side of that case study. And who’s going to be taking a choice to be a leader and not a follower in this conversation. Because the brands who have led — Nike, Dove, Mattel — they’re winning. They’re leading. Those that are sticking in that stuff first are also getting much better equity positioning with their consumer base, and for a pretty fickle, attention-span challenged audience, that’s a real good piece of currency.

DAILY BRIEF: What about the brands that don’t get it right, like Pepsi, for example. We saw how that played out. How can brands engage in an authentic way without backlash? Can they avoid messing up? I know your business charges a lot of money to share these secrets, but when a brand’s creating these messages, are they supposed to think, well, talk to Jess, before they release it?

WEINER: [laughs] I did name the business that because I took call after call from executives who said “Ooh! We have a woman problem or girl issue or we haven’t figured out this diversity thing yet and somebody told me to come talk to Jess.”

I think the reason why our business has succeeded in the way it has is because we don’t work in a typical agency model or consultancy model. We work very much as a brand ally and advocate. I’m an educator at heart, and I believe that part of our advising is really educating and helping to unlock the best potential on the senior leadership teams that make this decision. We can’t expect for everybody to be an expert in this area. There are plenty of things you’re an expert in that I’m not. That he or she at this company is an expert in that we’re not.

I never go in with a “you’re bad, and I’m gonna fix you, and it’s my way or the highway” attitude. I go in very collaboratively and say “what are the goals you have in mind for this business? Where are we challenged right now, and what can we do to become more leading edge?”

I think that collaborative nature for us has worked really well. Dove, I’ve worked with for twelve years. Barbie, seven years. That’s not a typical agency model of engagement, and I think it’s because we come in with a real commitment to a long-term transition in their business.

DAILY BRIEF: Right, so you’re not going in [to work with brands on] a commercial or two. It has to be long term.

WEINER: It has to be because then you see things like Pepsi, which, to me, spoke of no strategy, or real depth of understanding of a political moment. I don’t know if that was crafted intentionally or not. There’s been a lot of speculation around “all PR is good PR.”

My hunch is we’re all human and we make mistakes, so we’re not aware of our own biases. There was probably a team of people who thought they were doing something edgy or right or interesting, and perhaps didn’t have enough of the right people in the room to actually check that privilege and space of looking at things, and challenge that. And that happens. Brands are going to make mistakes on this. They’re going to step sideways and not get this stuff right. But I look for “Are they intentionally trying?” Is there a strategy in place to really be trying to do that? Because you’re talking about, at the core of it, systemic change.

DAILY BRIEF: Right. But is inclusion right for every brand? I think about the big dirt bike brand. They know their demographic, and that’s all they care about, and they’re successful. Do they need to engage with every one and include others?

WEINER: That’s such a great question. I’m of two mindsets with that. If you know what your core business demo is and you are reaching that well and your business is thriving, then I think you’re going to be less inclined to think about how to diversify your audience or why. Why would you? If what you have is working and your messaging is working, I don’t think this is a one-size-fits-all model.

But I do think that regardless of whether that’s working for you, as a competitive business owner, or brand director, you should be constantly thinking about it. An you should be tracking future trends of where this audience is going, and, by the way, who’s congenitally around that audience that I could pick up with this message as well.

I wouldn’t want to say just because you happen to reach X demo and it’s all white men and your messaging tends to be pretty sexist [that all of that’s okay]. We don’t live in a vacuum anymore. So, the internet holds people accountable. The buying consumer base holds people accountable. We’re also asking brands whether this is really about reaching your core demo or whether you just aren’t being inclusive of the world around you. Make sure that the message you’re sending out does no harm. That’s a separate conversation from “So we need to make this ad campaign more inclusive because… tick the box.”

Even for the white male that we’re reaching, a white male cowboy, are we doing it in the best and most authentic way possible? Are we speaking kindly of his relationships? Are we showing his daughters and wives or girlfriends or best friends or mothers in a good light?

I think some of that social responsibility is not always about the bottom line. As a brand, you have to be responsible to say as a business, we’re going to be mindful of this because its the right thing to do. And certainly, we’re making the case it’s also a good thing to do for your business.

DAILY BRIEF: I was talking with my girlfriend the other night, and wondered “Is ignorance bliss?” I remember a time when I was in my early teens, and I found out from mentors and my parents that I would experience life differently because I’m a black teenager. I went on to read Malcolm X’s autobiography, Marcus Garvey, and just explored a lot of black literature. But what if I didn’t know about these biases. Do you think ignorance is bliss in a way?

WEINER: Ignorance is bliss, but education is freedom. I remember a time in my life where the term “feminazi” was never anything I’d ever heard before. I’d never heard all of the reasons why feminists were scary. But education has been my freedom because once you read those books, it’s like the mafia, once you know too much, you can never get out.

What that does, and the reason why I think it’s freedom is because I wouldn’t want to be in a blissful world where I was unaware of systemic oppression of other people. While that might be bliss for us, education is freedom for all of us. If we can further educate the marketing world, the advertising world, the business world, about the real impact that words and images and media have on the psyche on the relationship of the belief systems and social systems, then we can begin to change that area.

It’s not the only area, clearly. Because we’ve been fighting this war before media is the way media is. But media has exacerbated and highlighted and brought the message faster and quicker to people than ever before. And those who make those messages have responsibility to become educated. My personal and professional belief is you’ve got to do your work and do no harm, and that’s going to take you waking up and being aware.

Jess Weiner speaks at PromaxBDA: The Conference 2017 on Tuesday, June 6. Learn more and sign up at promaxbda.org.

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