Marc Pritchard on The Power of Advertising

power to reach five billion people daily. Mark is truly using that power for purpose to reshape the narrative around women and girls, helping to eliminate bias and promote equality. I sat down with Mark at Seneca's form at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Listen to our conversation and learn about the revelation that changed his thinking, why he stowed his ground after releasing a seemingly controversial ad, and how each of us can be a force for good in

the world. And stick around after the conversation to hear our top takeaways. So this is Mark Kertude, as I mentioned, Chief Rand Officer of PNG, truly a legend in advertising and media and a truly fierce champion for women. I think all of us here today understand that PNG is one of the largest advertisers in the world with some of the most powerful brands in the world. And with

that enormous power comes enormous responsibility. So welcome Mark. So we'll talk about to Lett in a minute, um, but I wanted to start with this enormous reach and responsibility that you do have and what you're doing with that. Now. You often talk about business being a force for good and a force for growth, and most couple of weeks ago, the Business round Table came out and said that companies need to think about their social impact as well as profits.

That was a pretty big shift for the Business round Table. So what does that mean in terms of the advertising business. Well, since we're part of business, we believe that advertising is such a major force because what it does is it reaches so many people. Are our brands reach five billion people on the planet every day with our advertising multiple

times a day. And advertising affects perceptions. It affects perceptions from an influent standpoint, it communicates information, but most importantly what it does is it actually creates images and portrayals that embed memories into your mind that form bias. And so if those if those messages or images are inaccurate,

then that bias is going to be inaccurate. So we believe that it's very important that we need to have the accurate portrayal of all people, the particularly of women and girls in advertising to ensure that we can promote, eliminate bias, and promote equality. We also periodically take a stand and advertising should take a stand. In business to take a stand because we do um we are a

force for good and a force for growth. And what's fascinating about the Business Roundtable is that many many years ago, corporations were focused on the community in the world in which they live. That we went through this period where it became almost solely about profit and shareholder and now it's just really returning to what business can do is do both. I mean, it's very exciting. I mean, you know, we wrote this book about how we can fast forward and the real thesis is how we can each use

our power for purpose. And it seemed like in the business world for a long time, power was during the week and purposes on the weekends, you know, and and the two should not mix. And you know, shareholder value and I'm a corporate or so you can see I can go there for a long time. It's kind of bolted on. That's why we thought about it was bolted

on versus built in. We've now figured that what we need to do is we need to build in purpose, build in being a force for good on the areas of gender equality, racial equality, citizenship, and other aspects of sustainability. Then it becomes part of your business. And when you do that well, it actually is good and it drives growth. And the reason why it's so important is because it's more sustainable when it drives growth. If you just a force for good, you could be a philanthropy. If you're

just a force for growth, you're a mercenary. You do both. You have a sustainable model that can make the world a better place. Now, I yeah, um, I could spend, by the way, a lot of time talking to Mark about this, and I think you would all be fascinated

for a long time. But I have to ask this one first question about your background and sort of how you personally came to this idea of using your power for purpose, because I can't really overstate the influence that this man has had in the last several years on gender equality. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But how did you come to this yourself? Well, you know, I kind of grew up in a bit of an

activist um community. My dad was very active in the Chicano community in Colorado, and so he was sold by nature. I think I had a little bit in me um, but but it really didn't hit me uh in terms of actually doing something about it until a little over twenty years ago. I was at a spiritual ranch with my wife, Betsy and our three young daughters, who are all under the age of ten. At the time, I happen to be running the cover girl business uh and UM.

At the end of that week, the the person who led that, the spiritual leader, came up and said, listen, I I hope you understand the good you can do, because business will someday be the greatest force for good in the future. It's not gonna be clergy, it's not gonna be religion, it's not gonna be Government's gonna be business. It's gonna be the greatest force for good. If you choose to do so, you can do a lot of good.

And that was the proverbial blinding moment of clarity, because we had just created the easy breezy beautiful cover girl ad, but for our campaign, and unfortunately it didn't really accurately reflect um women. It was. It was somewhat stereotypical. It was somewhat objectifying. It was too young, the spokespeople too young, too thin, and too white. And I looked at my young my young daughters, and I thought, I can't live with this being what they view as the standard of beauty.

And I realized our advertising effects perceptions of beauty. So went back, worked with the team and we changed. So we got to change this. We have to. We had much better. We actually brought in Queen Latifa as probably our best cover girl ever. We then um added we had a Brandy over Time, Janelle Money, so few of Ogara, Ellen de generes Um. We just we just expanded and it became a great expression of what real beauty means, which is it's who I am. And that that was

That was a big one. A few years later, Queen Thifo came back to me, we have to be a Women of the World panel and um she we did a penalt together and she said, you know, we got

to do something good together again, and we did. Now we've done the queen collective, which is we we give uh multicultural women so largely black and Hispanic women, the opportunity to direct films that will get them behind the camera because the number of women that are directing films are like four those who were black around or even less less of a percent, and we're giving them opportunities

to produce films. I mean again, there's there's not enough time to go through all the campaigns, but the can I name a few? Like a girl campaign? We see equal campaign fighting racism with the talk. These are just recent campaigns. By the way, we just heard about the fight for Equal pay. That secret is kind of launching U. But let's talk about Tollette because this was a pretty polarizing shall I say add what was the reaction and

what did you expect from it? Well, the the fascinating thing about this is that the actual consumer sentiment was

not very polarizing. The actual consumer sentiment is that was very positive at and most of the people saw that found that the was was a good message because if you look at the ad, it shows bad behavior and it shows good behavior, and it shows role modeling positive behavior, and that's a pretty good message to be the best you can be, especially role modeling for the next generation, because the insight behind this ad was that it's not enough just to stand by and not objectify, not harass,

not bully, take action, take a step up. The problem is is that it got kind of hijacked um in the social media world. Interesting and what happened then is a lot of negative messages came, which was a disproportionate number of messages from a few, very very few sources, and then that got reported on, so the narrative became it was higher polarizing and controversial as opposed to what the actual sentiment was or multiple studies that came out two or three days later that said this is actually

a pretty positive ad. But there's a moment in there where I'm sure many people would have said, you know, we'd better pull back, because before you found out, I mean, when there was all that media coverage that you know, kind of false narrative media coverage, there was definitely a moment where I would think many people would say, maybe I've overstepped, I better pull back. But you doubled down.

Now why did you double down? You know, we had some very you to your point, We had written some nail biting moments when we when we understood where some of these things were coming from, and I want to be understood that this was very positive, we said, no, this is the right thing to do. This is the time, this is actually the time to double down to make sure that we continue to go forward. Now importantly, we also uh not just continue to go we we we we.

We went out and talked about it and explained it and discussed it and um, but we also listened. We listened to every side as well, because it's important. It's important to listen to Everett, to all sides, even if you didn't disagree. And that's what these things are built for is create conversation. And it's very important that we're creating conversations with men because last I checked, man are half the population and a little bit of power and

gender equality, I mean general equality equal when women. So having men step up b role models, have conversations, that's that's powerful. So we said, that's the reason where we're going to stick with this, because this is the time that we need to be able to express that men have really responsibility and many want to and do step up to do the right thing. That's why we kept going well, and I understand that sort of the younger consumer was really positive on the ad men and women.

Did you see a difference in sort of attitudes across the boarder? Did We had um some just Ransom research recently which indicated that our ratings went up among men under thirty five and women under thirty five. That's very heartening. So it's very hardening. You have access to incredible data. I mean, you're I think you may be the biggest advertiser in the world, so you might be the right person to tell us the future. So what are you seeing and what makes you concerned and what makes you

optimistic about gender equality? Well, the thing, the thing that makes me concerned is that even after all the work that's been done, we still have so many gaps, and that that that's still to me is one of the parts that concerns me because what that indication you just heard the two years and and and the fact that there's so many layers to so many of these problems that you really have to penetrate, like the way secret is done, which is I'm incredibly proud of how they've

gone after this on a multilayered basis that's the kind of thing that needs to get done, so that concerns me. But I would say I'm far more optimistic than anything, and that one of the biggest things that I'm optimistic about is the fact that the generation. It's not just not just the young generation. It's not just the Gen X and and the and the or Gen Z sorry and the and the millennials. It's if you look across now all age groups, including boomers um, more than half

of people are expecting brands to take a stand. They're expecting brands to express their views on gender equality. They're they're expecting people to take action. They're they're listening more. You know, many many of us that were in the in the boomer generation, you know, I think we had this latent desire to make a big difference. We it and have the tools that we have. Now, now we have Moneys and gen z as our children, They're influencing

us to step up and take more actions. I feel like we are on this cusp where we can really push it now. I'm also seeing more and more companies getting involved, more and more brands, companies using their voices, and that's the thing that gives me optimism that we can that we can make a difference here in the in the coming years. Now is the time to act though,

right A hundred percent agree. And you know we named our books fast Forward and the Reason why today's program, which is the first thing we really focused on the role of the private sector. We felt it was important because as we're looking to the hunt of anniversary, as we're looking to years we're looking to we have to accelerate. And we do believe that people like you, organizations like yours,

can help us accelerate. And I really want to thank you because Sharon talks a little bit about the power of one and the role the difference one person can make, and we talked about earlier. Virtue Foundation says the same thing. And I have to say, Mark, and I really mean it sincerely, that I think what you've done in your position, and I've noticed so many other companies are now wanting to do what Mark Richard does and that's a really good thing in the world. So more and more companies

are thinking about their advertising spending a different way. They're thinking about the stories they're telling. They're thinking it's competitive for them, um if they want to win that they better tell positive stories about women, and so we really sincerely thank you well. It is a privilege to be with you. I think Cynec Women is an amazing organization doing amazing things, and if I can be useful to any one individual to make a difference, I will do that.

But thank you. Stay tuned for our takeaways after this break. That was a truly inspiring conversation with Mark Pritchard. To learn more about the Gillette campaign, go to the Best Men Can Be dot org and see how p andng Angelette are driving the equality conversation around men and boys. My top takeaways. First, today companies have both the opportunity and the responsibility to bring about positive change in the world,

and the public expects it. Second, when companies and individuals put purpose at the center of what they do, not just bolted on, they can both be a force for good and a force for growth. Finally, there will be times when a company or an individual needs to take a stand, even when facing significant criticism and push back. It is in those moments where you can find power

in your purpose. You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on power and Purpose, brought to you by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner of p and listen to Seneca Women conversations on power and purpose on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please support this

podcast by telling your friends, subscribe and rating us. For more information on Seneca Women, follow us on social media, visit our website Seneca Women dot com, and check out the Seneca Women app free in the app Store. Have a great day, m