Sex just doesn’t sell anymore, if you’re anyone who’s anyone – you get this.

Britain’s advertising watchdog is moving with the current of our progressive society and making changes to advertising standards which could ban advertisements that promote harmful gender stereotypes. 

Stats have shown audiences are increasingly turned-off by narrow gender representations, especially women who equate to the majority of consumer purchasing figures.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decision is based on numerous industry studies that display how advertising often creates expectations for gender roles and back people into a corner of ‘how they should look, feel and be’ if they are to excel in life.

With rampant activism, sexual freedom and gender binaries continually being broken down by the impressively large amount of forward thinking boys, girls and everything in-between in our world; shallow tactics or backwards representations of any gender just isn’t selling to people like it used to.

Long-haired boys are equally as beautiful as long-haired girls now. It’s ok if a drag queen is better at make-up than your female self and it’s certainly fine if your eight-year-old boy wants to push a pram in his pink plastic pumps.

PRIME EXAMPLEs OF WHAT WE DON'T WANT TO SEE:

The premise of advertising is to generate cut-through in a market where most things have already been done. If you’re going to be persuasive – it’s important to remain hyper-vigilant on how the world is evolving. Peoples idea of utopia or what they’re drawn towards aesthetically, is no longer what was.

Companies persuasive tactics need to reform to reflect what people want. The advertisng industry in general plays a big role in constructing identities, particularly in relation to gender; so despite wider gains in equality, intensified or stereotyped gender portrayals in advertising will not survive.

Below is the way of our advertising future:

By creating empathy and reducing social distance, depicting women and men more authentically builds closer relationships with the consumer.

Advertisers and their corporate clients may be pleasantly surprised to hear that being forced into the 21st century by the ASA may also help their bottom line. There is a host of research to show that it makes simple business sense to eradicate unfair stereotypes from advertising completely.  

By Jessica McCabe