The Aussie Bloke stereotype has become a well worn shortcut for masculinity with Australian advertising at a time when violence against women is at a crisis point, industry observers say.
“I doubt advertisers have made this connection and I'd hope they'd be horrified to think they are contributing,” Jess Lilley, co-founder & creative director of The Open Arms, an ethical, female-owned advertising agency, told AdNews.
"A lot of the work the industry makes happens in a bubble and is really dependent on coded representations of people and visual shortcuts to talk to their audience.
“The only variation is in which type of Aussie Bloke - the shouty one, the larrikin one, the tough one, the domestically incompetent one or the tradie?”
Lilley asks: Where's the sensitive one, the emotionally available one, the tradie dad?
“There is of course room for all these blokes in our advertising landscape but we are totally over indexing on a type at the moment and they are rarely sharing space with women,” she says.
To help combat this, shEqual, Women’s Health Victoria’s advertising equality project, has targeted the beer-drinking, sports-betting Aussie Bloke ad stereotype in its gender equality campaign, Commercial Breakdown, via female-owned advertising agency The Open Arms.
Commercial Breakdown is a Gogglebox-style video featuring comedians Alex Lee and Lewis Garnham, who call out the harmful messages they see in recent Australian ads.
While women are stuck at home, cooking, cleaning, caring and shopping, the Aussie Bloke is out with his mates, in the great outdoors, sports-betting, beer-drinking, crypto-punting and winning.
They’re never at home; telling Australians that excitement, fun and success are all found outside the house, in the spaces where women aren’t welcome.
According to Lilley, research outlines that the more people are exposed to gender stereotypes in mass media, the more likely they are to believe in narrow ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman.
Seeing a bunch of mates together in the first few seconds of an ad immediately tells young men that this is for them, she says.
“The problem is, when everyone advertising products to men uses this same formula, it sells a very limited and limiting idea to boys and men about what it is to be a man in Australia.”
The Open Arms spent a lot of time in the research and ideation process because the last thing the agency wanted was for the creative industry to feel like they were being scolded or having the finger pointed at them.
The agency is acutely aware of how stressful the creative process can be and how many factors affect decision making when it comes to getting a campaign on air, Lilley says.
“We've all made compromises along the way to get things made. But once we had completed the research and had a deeper understanding of the impacts these gender tropes can have - and could see just how pervasive they still are, particularly the bloke tropes - we felt clearer about the message. We still knew we weren't the ones to deliver it though.
“In reality, it should come from people who are impacted by advertising. So we thought about the kinds of people who might be able to take a clear and objective view on the issue and have the conversation in a way that is entertaining for time poor creatives.”
Lilley had just been to some shows at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and was impressed by how good comedians are at holding up societal truths to people, sometimes uncomfortable truths, in a way that is disarming, charming and really makes them think.
“It seemed a natural fit for this message. When we started talking to Alex and Lewis about the issue, they had so many deeper reflections, we knew it was the right approach,” she says.
In terms of understanding the problem, a lot of desk research took the duo at The Open Arms to meaty international studies and texts.
One called The Price of Success was released last year in the UK. It interviewed 4000 men in the US and UK about whether the versions of masculinity they were being presented by brands reflected their actual values and markers of success, Lilley says.
“Spoiler alert, men universally felt a disconnect between what they were told to value - wealth, physical prowess, social success, conquering the world. Their true markers of success were a lot closer to home - health, family and relationships.
“This mirrored a 2020 study undertaken locally by Vic Health. Another 2023 study by the UN into the social impacts of gender representation in advertising across the Asia-Pacific found that women are still more likely to be shown in domestic and caring roles, that an ongoing perpetuation of unrealistic beauty standards is contributing to girls losing confidence in themselves by the age of six, and that "Discriminatory gender norms perpetuated in media and advertising can normalize acts of violence against women and girls and portray unhealthy relationships."
To understand the current state of the creative industry and what might be stopping adland embracing more authenticity in the people we it puts on screen, the agency interviewed a number of people currently working in creative agencies.
“The most consistent issues relate to 1) convincing clients to see a different approach, 2) having decision making taken out of their hands by more senior people in the agency and 3) production still being very male dominated, particularly in senior roles like director, cinematographer and editor,” Lilley says.
These are all issues agencies can and should address, she believes.
“It shouldn't be on individual creatives to have to solve this problem. This is a leadership issue and agency management and their client counterparts need to take it seriously and be more accountable for the impact of the work they are creating.”
Women’s Health Victoria manager gender equity and capacity building Lauren Zappa said the average Australian is exposed to thousands of ads a day, so what happens in those ads matters.
“That’s because advertising is a powerful multi-billion-dollar industry that exists only to influence us. We want to give people the tools to challenge gender stereotypes and to support brands that promote authentic, respectful and diverse portrayals of all Australians.
“Most ads still feature young, white, able-bodied, cis-gendered and heterosexual people, leaving many in our community unseen and unrepresented.”
Lilley says the core audience for the campaign is the advertising community so shEqual has opted for an organic rollout.
The video will be housed at shequal.com.au along with resources that can help agencies address the problem.
shEqual will share the campaign via socials, agency networks and grassroots orgs in the industry who advocate for progressive change.
“shEqual is encouraging people in the industry who are passionate about diversity and representation to share Commercial Breakdown within their agencies to start conversations around how they can do better in terms of creating more authentic gender representation in ads,” she says.
“There is also a broader PR strategy as we feel this conversation is relevant to the wider community given the ongoing crisis of male violence against women, especially in terms of helping people decode what they are watching. We know that pervasive gender stereotypes in media and advertising can create harmful attitudes in society, so we want to arm viewers with the tools to understand what they are watching and how it can cause harm.”
Commercial Breakdown encourages Australians to have a conversation about harmful gender stereotypes they see in ads, and to support brands and agencies to create ads that contribute to a better Australia.
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