The goal of SeeHer is to increase the percentage of accurate portrayals of women and girls in US advertising.

McHugh says marketers have are facing a unique moment as that viewers will be watching with a heightened awareness as to what space brands are taking at this particular time.

“One of the conversations that we always have is around the importance of how brands show up, especially in times like this,” McHugh says. “Consumers are always watching.”

SeeHer’s research explores how consumers feel about brands representing things like diversity, but now, in particular, brands are being closely watched for where and how they are marketing during this particular moment.

“I think [consumers] are counting on brands, especially established brands, to lead the way,” McHugh says.

With the NewFronts approaching, another topic that hasn’t been buried as a result of COVID is the rapid evolution of streaming platforms. According to McHugh, it’s still all about where the consumer is.

“From what I understand, video consumption patterns continue to change and migrate,” McHugh says. “I think we’ve seen an increase in video consumption through this entire situation that we’re all in.”

Consumers have adapted faster during this situation because they have the time and access to explore more than they would in their normal routines. The question is, will these new habits stick once COVID has come and passed.

“I guess the proof will be in the pudding when everyone goes back, one day, to whatever normal looks like,” McHugh says.

This video is a preview in a series leading up to the 2020 IAB NewFronts.   Please visit this page for additional segments from the Road to the NewFronts 2020.  This Beet.TV series is presented by the IAB. 

The ANA launched #SeeHer in the summer of 2016 as an outgrowth of its Alliance for Family Entertainment’s drive for more family friendly TV programming. #SeeHer’s goal is to more accurately portray all girls and women in media.

“#SeeHer has made the importance of gender equality and diversity come to light in our space,” says McHugh.

When the ANA polled people about next steps beyond family friendly programming, they cited a lack of positive female role models. “Because they looked at the content that was out there and it wasn’t showing women in leadership positions. It was showing women waiting for their kids to get home from school reading a magazine, which, by the way is unrealistic because even if you’re home you’re working very, very hard with your children doing lots of things.”

Men are not left out of the picture. “It was about putting more positive portrayals of women and men in different roles,” she adds. “There’s lots of men I know, great men, who stay home with their kids also. It’s a family choice.”

The #SeeHer initiative has created more awareness in advertising and media about what needs to be done from both a marketing message standpoint and appropriate programming, according to McHugh. It uses a data-tracking Gender Equality Measure (GEM) to identify best-in-class advertising and programming that supports girls and women, according to the ANA’s news release.

All of L’Oreal’s commercials are rated as the result of consumers being asked several questions. “It’s not a shaming game for marketers and it’s not publicized, but it’s something that’s used to learn so that you can celebrate the successes and learn from moving forward as you create content and also so that you can learn from your mistakes moving forward and course correct.”

McHugh says marketers took a stand in the beginning of #SeeHer “and sort of drew a line” by telling its agency partners to only buy programs with high GEM rankings. That line included the proviso, “We don’t want to pay extra for this because this should really be the way of the world.”

You are watching Gender Equality Means Business, a Beet.TV series presented by Meredith Corporation in partnership with #SeeHer. For additional videos from the series, please visit this page.

“I think that competition is always a good thing, and I think that this new offering at Xandr led by Brian Lesser is certainly going to be a force that I’m very interested to see how it develops,” Karp says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Xandr Relevance Conference. “I think they have all of the right pieces to certainly make a very interesting offering.”

McHugh, who is SVP of Omni Media, Creative Solutions & Strategic Investments at the iconic personal care marketer has always been a believer in relevance. “I always said that it’s about the value exchange between the consumer and what she or he chooses to engage with. We’re all sort of attention starved. There’s too many things for us to do,” she says.

Thus Xandr’s research about just how busy people are “wasn’t surprising.” The bigger question is how, when and where brands can fit in.

“So how do we gain permission from those consumers to engage with them in a meaningful way? I think that’s part of their story, which I’m interested to see how that plays out in messaging. I think we all have to address that in an ad-blocking, futuristic world.”

Summing up the road ahead of Xandr, she adds, “They have the data behind it, they have tech, so they have a really interesting, perfect storm so we’ll see what happens.”

This video is part of a series leading up to, and covering the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. This Beet.TV program is sponsored by Xandr, a unit of AT&T.

“There are a lot of us that are hungry for different solutions to get it right with how we need to go to market,” she adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “We value the consumer experience. We value our relationship with the consumer more than anything.”

Companies like L’Oreal want to “get it right moving forward,” including messaging and creating meaningful engagements with consumers, according to McHugh, who believes “there’s great learning” that can emerge from working together.

“I think that we need to be part of the piping part, not just the ‘here, we’ve got a solution for you. Isn’t it great?’ And it works for the networks and maybe it’s not so great for how we would want to go to market. I think that is huge and I think we’ll get there together.”

What she’s seeking is a true partnership with the sell-side in a test-and-learn-together mode. “We rely very heavily on our agencies and they should absolutely be at the table as well, but marketers need to more and more be at the table and we’re hungry for that.”

At last year’s Cannes Festival, L’Oreal revealed that it would experiment with Google Labs on six-second creative spots. As BusinessInsider reports, the companies would work together to examine data on what people are engaging with on YouTube so that L’Oreal could produce timely, six-second ads running prior to content on the video platform.

“We also do tutorials that run much longer,” says McHugh. “It should be about the consumer experience and what they’re looking for and the value exchange between the messaging and what you’re providing and whether or not it’s valuable to the consumer.”

While 30-second ads play a certain role, “it’s certainly not the be all and end all and we need to test and learn our way into the future.”

This video is from a series of videos and sessions produced in partnership with FreeWheel at Cannes 2018 as part of the FreeWheel Forum on the Future of Television. You can find more videos from this series here.