Telstra has banned the “stupid dad” archetype according to director of segment marketing Andy Bateman, who says the archetype character is “tokenistic” and “safe”.
At an International Advertising Association (IAA) breakfast on 'Marketing to the Modern Family', Bateman said he and Telstra's creative agency DDB have banned the character expressly from its marketing because he is “over this sort of tokenistic, dumb down, safe” stereotype.
“What we try to do, and it's working incredibly well for us, is to identify a meaningful, motivating customer insight and use that as a means by which to wrap around a product or service or a brand proposition,” Bateman said.
“Regardless of gender. If we have to try and navigate what [gender]roles everybody plays in a scenario then I'm not doing my job and the agency aren't doing theirs.”
Bateman said that Telstra doesn't target the family in a traditional sense with its marketing, and instead looks at life-stage segments as a more discriminating impact on technology choice. However, he said that from a television perspective, there is still an “aspirational” view of family.
“A lot of advertising is the idealistic Sunday family afternoon and it's just horseshit. It doesn’t really happen. It's these idealised scenarios that I find not very authentic,” Bateman said. “I think we all like to think that there is this concept of family that is the centre and beating heart of society, which, evidently from a statistical point of view, is not there.”
SBS chief content officer Helen Kellie said that when marketers try to portray unifying stories they unintentionally use overt stereotypes like 'stupid dad'. But she said, using SBS as an example, with social media being such a loud voice in modern society, a lack of authenticity “kills us instantly”.
“It's not new, I don't think I’m the first to say it and I won't be the last, but it's about authenticity and I think today more than ever that's really critical,” Kellie said.
“Stereotypes are elementary marketing. It just averages everything as bland, because we all know that in reality that's not how we connect. Just ignore the stereotype and try to look for real-life authentic stories.”
Statistics from Ipsos found that the picture of the Australian family differs dramatically from the traditional view, with 57% of women with kids working full or part time, 71% of Australians aged 50 or older helping their adult children with babysitting and 29% of men doing all or most of the food shopping. In addition, 27% of households are single parent households and 40% of households have at least one parent not born in Australia.
Woolworths head of consumer insights Maysoon El-Ahmad said thatas a result of this changing view of “family,” Woolworths has removed the word from its customer insight team altogether.
“At Woolworths we refer to them as households and life stage segments,” El-Ahmad said.
“The word family is automatically associated with families with kids, which only accounts for 40% of households. I think that's actually the first thing, we need to stop using the word family and start using the word household.”
Archibald/Williams partner Bram Williams said that really the conversation is just talking about “modern people” and the changes in their relationships and behaviours.
He said that the portrayal of people isn't “a particularly new subject”. Williams pointed to examples of Hollywood from the 70s and 80s including sitcoms such as Diff'rnt Strokes and The Brady Bunch, as family shows which present differing or “modern” views of family.
“We're looking at it with new eyes perhaps, because of the time that we’re in, but these [family portrayals] are not new in our culture,” Williams said.
“I think the political correctness that we all started to grapple within in the 90s meant that we're starting to overthink a lot of these things.”
“Therein lies the challenge for brands, to be a bit cooler and a bit freer in recognising difference.”
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