When thoughtful message marketing through copy and creative gave way to media buying, the charm of marketing gave way to mass advertising. It served Madison Avenue well as quantity over quality filled bank accounts. But the wide range of communications devices now begs micro-marketing and contextual messaging.

Eventually gender-neutral advertising will become the norm, but right now advertising, like many other aspects of society, can be polarizing, and retailers need to determine how far they want to go into these turbulent waters.

Advertising generally does not look to set our society’s norms, it merely tries to reflect and leverage general understanding to promote its message. Perhaps there is a natural time lag between the advertising and society with society setting what is the norm — advertising for the most part is merely a follower.

Today, a majority feel gender depictions are properly represented so there is no reason for a mass-market buyer to change their approach. What will be interesting is watching how fast cultural norms shift as advertisers choose to speak appropriately to the 30 percent.

This is a subject that is in some ways difficult to focus on. There are more than two sides to consider. One, and the most important to the advertisers, is who are they sending the messages to? They hope they are the ones who are going to buy the products. But what age and demographic do they fall in? Are they older and not readily acceptable to the changes of gender roles? It is hard to determine. And where do they draw the line on who they depict in the advertising? Is it determined again by the customer or the product? If it is the product; then the buyer and that person’s age, etc. will determine how the advertising is generated. This is just the tip of the iceberg. As time goes on, things will change and become acceptable where they have not been before. Time always seems to be the determining factor of when something is acceptable.

The only ads I have notices that consciously address changing gender roles are those for Tide and some cereals. The brand and advertising managers realize that not only women do laundry and eat cereal with their kids. Why have I not noticed anyone else making that change? The laggards will lose market share.

The question — and to some extent the survey — seems to confuse “not gender specific” with “equally represented,” but that’s hardly the case. There may be both male/female construction workers, fire…fighters (yes, I started to write “firemen”) or nurses, but the numbers are hardly 50/50. And of course there’s nothing to say advertising is supposed to be a mirror of reality.
So my short answer is “yes, it’s an oversimplification” — a big one.

Mass advertising platforms (TV, magazines, mainstream websites) will remain as is — using stereotypical gender roles because they must by definition appeal to the “average” perceptions. I’ve seen studies that show that most people prefer the comfort of traditional portrayals rather than their own reality. I do think this will change over time as Gens Y & Z age into mass consumerism, but don’t expect major shifts.

The place to see modern gender roles and other realities is in niche advertising platforms as well as from those brands that self-identify as catering to modern families and other growing entities such as LGBT, elderly, etc. As these niche platforms continue to grow in importance and in their ability to micro-target individuals, there will likely be a tipping point where this will spill over somewhat into mass advertising.