Kellogg Company Committed To Ensuring Its Media And Creative #SeeHer

BATTLE CREEK, Mich., Oct. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kellogg Company Joins Association of National Advertisers' #SeeHer Campaign.

Today, in honor of International Day of the Girl, I find myself reflecting on some amazing statistics: Did you know that women account for 85 percent of purchases, yet, according to She-conomy®, a leading marketing blog and expert on marketing and statistical trends, an incredible 91 percent of women say that advertisers don't understand them?

Those statistics are troubling and they have to change.

To help address this, Kellogg is joining the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE)'s #SeeHer, a U.S. industry movement to increase accurate portrayals of women and girls in advertising and media by 20 percent by 2020.  

Here at Kellogg, our K Values call upon us to operate with humility, a hunger to learn and a commitment to producing quality advertising and creative that reflects gender equality, authenticity and confidence.

That's why, when ANA approached us and invited Kellogg to join other marketers who are interested in supporting its mission to accurately portray girls and women in media we joined. I'm not just a business leader—I'm a dad too, and this campaign really resonated with me.  As a dad, it's important that I support initiatives that expose my daughter and her friends to positive and realistic portrayals of themselves. As marketers, we have a responsibility to all women to support them with realistic, uplifting images of who they are and what they have the potential to be.

The accurate portrayal of women in advertising has always been important at Kellogg Company and a creative mandatory on the Special K® brand. We're committed to ensuring an accurate portrayal of girls and women in media, and evaluating ourselves objectively. For example, last year, Special K® asked the female employees who are members of our Women of Kellogg (WOK) Business/Employee Resource Group to evaluate our work. We incorporated their feedback—both the positives and challenges, and used it to improve our creative.

We have a commitment to encouraging women to "OWN IT," embrace body confidence and leverage inner strength to succeed. In order to ensure that women and girls are accurately portrayed, we have to be willing to challenge ourselves and subject our work to testing and scrutiny.

At Kellogg, we know that women are still working to achieve equality and equal opportunity in the workplace. We're committed to supporting women and also collaborating with other marketers to proactively address the opportunities to improve the way women are presented in the media. Our membership with ANA allows us to address important issues like unconscious bias through subjecting the work to third party evaluation.

As participants in the ANA's #SeeHer campaign, we submit our creative to consumer testing. Our work is evaluated using a score called the "Gender Equality Measure" (GEM™). This score measures ads or entertainment on how prominently we depict women, amid a larger industry conversation about gender equality and unconscious bias in both ads and the industry.

Since last June, more than 23,000 ads across industries have been evaluated using the GEM™ ranking system. And I'm pleased to share that Kellogg's work has consistently outperformed the industry average, scoring within the top 2 percent of all ads scored.

Our Special K® creative is consistently delivering work that outperforms the industry. In fact, Special K's "Women Are Amazing" TV ad is currently featured in the #SeeHer Ad Gallery page. This ad is featured because it earned an outstanding score of 116, a GEM™ ranking well above the average index of 100.

I believe our scores exceed the industry norm because we have a hunger to learn, and a passion for evaluating ourselves against high standards—standards that ensure that we're part of a movement to celebrate women and girls as powerful, joyful and confident.

To learn more about #SeeHer, and many of its best performing ads (including Special K), click here.

Craig Bahner
President
U.S. Morning Foods

CONTACT: Media Hotline, 269-961-3799

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SOURCE Kellogg Company