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When it comes to delivering positive brand impact, few global ad agencies are better positioned to shine than Ogilvy UK.
First of all, the majority of the leadership team presented on its website are women. Equally important, it has built a body of impactful work addressing initiatives such as the prevention of domestic violence in South Africa, gender equity in partnership with the United Nations, UK Black Pride, and perhaps the most well-known, redefining "Real beauty" with Dove.
This is why its announcement last month to halt work with influencers who digitally modify their appearances felt uncharacteristically punitive. I embrace its intention to make the social media ecosystem less harmful to girls and women. But its action lacks a crucial component – accountability.
Ogilvy should understand that women's efforts to be beautiful are less the cause of harm, and more a symptom of an oppressive standard maintained in large part by its own industry.
It would have been so easy when announcing Ogilvy's attempt to eradicate the beauty ideal to acknowledge its role in it, especially given its track record in promoting large-scale equity.
To justify its punitive approach, Ogilvy’s head of influence, Rahul Titus, argued that influencer marketing is “supposed to be the authentic side of marketing”. But why can’t all of Ogilvy’s marketing be authentic?
If it really wanted to make a difference, I implore agency leaders to hold themselves accountable as part of the problem and make internal changes to actively drive healthier self images for all audiences–including their own influencer partners.
Here are three areas where Ogilvy can (and should) hold its own feet to the fire – it’s not too late.
Support
Rather than punish influencers who succumb to an age-old beauty standard that Ogilvy helped create, it should support them instead.
Why not take a page out of its own Dove portfolio, the gold standard of support, and help influencers understand the pernicious impact modification has on self-esteem.
Ogilvy’s Dove work highlights the agency’s unique talent for producing epiphanic moments, pulling back the curtain to reveal to the public an unvarnished truth.
Ogilvy could offer influencers that same opportunity for insight. Imagine a second run of Dove’s "Detox your feed" campaign, where influencers were given the chance to realise their far-reaching power over young minds. I’m not suggesting every influencer would revamp their content. I’m suggesting that before Ogilvy discounts influencers, they should try including them instead.
Retouching
Ogilvy punishing women for digital modifications without owning up to its own retouching practices establishes a terrible power dynamic and a double standard.
What it telegraphs is: as a global agency, we regularly retouch our talent, but influencers shouldn’t be empowered to do so themselves.
If Ogilvy is going to drop influencers for modification practices, it should announce an internal commitment to minimise its own retouching.
Maybe there are training tutorials for in-house or third-party retouchers that show how to reject the more overt beauty ideals. What can Ogilvy state on its website or other owned channels that inspire other marketers to embrace a more fair, humane female portrayal?
Casting
The standard of beauty is often set in casting. Ogilvy can leverage talent selection to walk its walk. For example, is representation a part of client contracts? Is the word diversity inclusive of body diversity? Is there clear direction to help team members resist the learned behaviour to favor stereotypical beauty?
Perhaps there is a company policy on how to communicate with talent that didn’t get the job. If Ogilvy stands for healthy self-image, then it should be policy to uplift people in a business replete with rejection. In this age of transparency, Ogilvy will not be exempt from adhering to the positivity standard they demand from others.
It's unfathomable that Ogilvy UK, given its credibility to take a stand for these influencers, would choose to wield its power and cut them off instead, as if women’s pressure to be pretty had nothing to do with Ogilvy at all.
It’s common knowledge that from the dawn of marketing, women’s bodies have been leveraged to sell everything from beer to burgers, cars to cigarettes. As babies in strollers, cruising past bus stops and billboards, we’re exposed to messaging that establishes how we should look, and thus, what our worth is to society.
Ogilvy could have picked up the thread of fairness, decency, and equity woven throughout much of its work, and landed an action that reflected both self-awareness and a vision for the future.
It could’ve extended a hand rather than pointed a finger. That's what positive change looks like in today’s business climate, not withholding economic opportunity from the same population of people its industry has objectified for decades.
MJ Deery is creative director, story, at Matter Unlimited