SPECIAL EDITION: GETTING TO EQUAL: Madonna Badger on Finding Your Superpower

been more crucial. We have two amazing leaders who are guest hosting these six episodes, Carol and Tastad, Group President North America and Deiana Bass, vice President Global Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, both from PNG, one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world. Together, Caroline and Deiana have created an impressive gender equality strategy for PNG, and it's a strategy that's really breaking new ground on these issues

in the private sector. In today's episode of Getting to Equal, Caroline Indianna discuss how each of us can use our own unique voice, really our own superpower to make progress towards equality. Their guest today is the incredible Madonna Badger, the legendary advertising executive. Carolin and Diana, thanks so much for joining us again today. I am really looking forward

to the conversation with Madonna. Thank you, Kim. So today we're going to talk about finding your superpower, and we're going to talk to someone who has certainly found hers. So what do we mean by finding your superpower? Well, it's finding that place where each of us, as individuals, as companies or organizations of any kind can have the greatest impact and then take action to accelerate progress for all people in the workplace and frankly, in the world.

You know that's so right, Diana. We all have superpowers, large and small, and we know that we make the most progress for equality when we all decided to get in the game. We started thinking about this really in the very beginning when we were defining our overall strategy for gender equality at p AND. We knew we had to be very choiceful in defining the work that we would do. We knew we had to be intentional to have the greatest impact, and we chose three areas to

focus on. One was using our voice in advertising to tackle bias and speak up. Two was using our influence to ensure access to education and economic opportunities for girls

and women. And finally, ensuring that at p AND we built a workplace that would enable women to thrive, to bring to life our aspiration for representation at all levels with multicultural representation in the US, and we know that when we access our superpowers, we can raise the bar and we can build a better world for all women and all men, equality for all individuals in however they define themselves. Joining us for this conversation is a woman

dubbed the Lioness Who Roared. Thirty year advertising veteran and founder of hashtag Women Not Objects, Madonna Badger is founder and chief creative officer of Badger and Winters. After a pivotal announcement that the agency would no longer create work that objectified women, Badger and Winters took home Advertising Ages

coveted Small Agency of the Year award in two thousand sixteen. Recently, add Week named Madonna a disruptor for spearheading a revolution in the advertising industry, and the four A's recognized her as one of the one hundred people who make advertising great. I am so thrilled and happy to introduce you to our friend, a creative partner of ours, Madonna Badger. It's so great to be here. Thank you. It's such a nice introduction. It is so great to have you hear

mad on it. I can think of no one better to talk about using their own superpower to eradicate bias and advance equality. During these podcasts, we've been speaking with extraordinary individuals who have amazing platforms, all using their voices and their influence to accelerate progress for women. And you

know we love Badger and Winters. But for those who are listening and who don't know your agency, tell us a little bit about it well at Badgroom Winters UM and Jim Winters is my business partner and has been for the last sixteen years. Our idea is to build a brave agency culture that helps others create brave brands, and that this focus on brave and purposeful work has really attracted a group of talented, passionate, and very diverse

people That makes us incredibly proud. These individuals are inspired by the way our open, supportive and collaborative culture helps them to thrive. This also helps us to attract the kind of clients that we want to have. Clients like Ola who is with Rocktern Gamble of course UM, clients like Rice is where we did hashtag no Kids in cages UM and also doing our own work like hashtag women not Objects. I love that you brought up women uh not objects, so I want to start there. That

was UM in two thousand and sixteen. I believe that you launched that campaign importantly. It put a spotlight on widespread objectification of women in advertising and frankly helped open a multi year dialogue and the advertising industry about its responsibility to ethically represent women in all forms of advertising. Hashtag women not Objects has had over thirty one million views on YouTube and Facebook in over a hundred and seventy five countries. That's just amazing. So tell us a

little bit about women not objects. Well, women not Objects was created to really help people see the way that women were objectified and add all around them an outdoor on television, uh, in print, in fashion, in alcohol and liquor, in UM, in every industry, in every way, in every medium, UM, women were being objectified. And what do I mean by that?

I mean that they were treated as a prop a body part, so super sensual used to sell you know, a ball of the CARDI or I've even seen it for a grocery store, UM with a cattoop and then the other is plastic, so really retouched beyond human recognition. I've got a great example of women not objects. It was Christmas, um and fifth Avenue, and on this billboard were three young women. Um. They were completely naked. Um. They all had the exact same pair of shoes on.

They were like retouched so that their bodies all looked the same, their skin all looked the same, basically, And it was such an incredible way to objectify um, these three very powerful supermodels. UM. And I just couldn't believe how many people were walking by with their children and sort of not even thinking about it. That has huge impact on young girls when they see stuff like that. You've also done films about that as well. Yeah, it does.

In our In our second film we did, it was all about the harm and there were teenage girls, um taking cellophane and wrapping around their thighs as many times as they could, um, so that you know they had they would get a thigh gap. UM. And you know, I couldn't help but put those sort of two things together, These three women on if Avenue in every magazine and you know, these young girls trying to get a flag up. You know, the other thing that Um that you did

that I thought was amazing is that you showed children advertisements. Yeah. Well, I mean they were only outdoor ads, so they were ads that children could presumably see anyway. So we showed them those outdoor ads. And you know, one girl said, it makes me feel bad about my body when seeing like, you know, a half naked lady Gaga ad or. Um. You know, one little boy said, it's private. You know

that's private. You're not supposed to show that part. And you know, it made them feel less than and it made them feel like it was a secret, private world that little children aren't supposed to be a part of. Yeah, there's the one little boy that said, I'm uncomfortable with this. I don't want to look at it anymore. Yeah, exactly, exactly. This was a real labor of love for you, wasn't it.

So I had just come back from my hiatus um where you know, as you all well know, my um children Lily, Sarah and Grace and my parents all died in a fire on Christmas Day. So I came back to my agency and I knew I wanted to do something. I wanted to do something with purpose. Um. I didn't want to just sell stuff anymore. You know. I wanted to find something to say um because on my hiatus I had tried uh selling antique sofas with my friend Kate. It was told disaster. So I knew that I was

really good at advertising. So I wanted to do something that was good for the world. We made a move, a little film, and it went viral really quickly. But the place I really wanted to go and the place I really wanted everybody to see it was it Can just for the audience here because and not everybody will know why is CAN so important. CAM was important to me because this is where all of the international creative directors come, and so do clients, and so do you know,

brand managers and strategists. But it was really the creative directors that I wanted to get in front of because I felt like if they could see this film, if they could understand the harm that they were causing young women, you know, little girls one in four who had you know at this point, who had been on a diet

um by the age of eleven in the US. You know, just horrific stuff that um that happens, especially to children, that if they could see what what I what I was talking about, if they could hear or if they could understand that, they wouldn't want to cause any harm to anybody. And so that's why it was, you know, I mean, it was so important to us that Jim and I faked a business trip to London so we could meet with the can Lion people. Like, we're here

for a client, so we're just worrying. Could we like come over and talk to you a little bit more about this hashtag women do objects things? Can you tell people what can Lions are. Can Lions are the international oscars of advertising. They are the be all end all, They create the most coveted prize and um. And so my number one goal was for them to see it. And then the number two goal was to get the jury rules changed. UM, so as you know it can

juries make decisions about what pieces of war will be awarded. Now, the rules are that if you objectify a woman or man, or you know, anybody in an ad, you are automatically disqualified. Your piece of work is automatically thrown out. And that's a huge, huge intervention that was made, and that was made honestly a very short time ago. We talked about system changes to help us get to where we accurately and authentically portray people in advertising. Absolutely. Yeah, Madonna, I

want to echo what Caroline is saying. It is really incredible what you're doing. It can and the fact that you're impacting an entire industry that is really hard. I mean that is a superpower. And the fact that you are leading a change that makes sure there are little girls out there seeing things that are unattainable to them and thinking that they're supposed to be something that they can never be. That is amazing. Madonna. Yeah, Madonna, so

so true. It's it's just incredible. Thank you. It felt really good. We'll be back after this break, Madonna. When we saw your Women Not Objects campaign, we knew that you were the person and the creative agency that we wanted to work with on our global gender equality campaign, someone who would help us tell a story in a really compelling way. And your idea for the campaign was we See Equal, and we loved it from the first

time we saw it, so tell us about we See Equal. Basically, it came from the idea that gender is a human construct and that um, everything that we portrayed together and we See Equal has no gender, So the and why is that important? Because that's where stereotypes are born. Diapers, you know, equal women, uh, supposedly, households yours, equal women, supposedly men equal head of household, women equals love, and

so all of those um constructs. We turned on the ted and we said love doesn't care who gives it, households don't care who run them, diapers don't care who changed them. And we did the whole thing with YouTube or found footage UM to show real people living their real lives um doing the sort of things that we all do in our lives. But we flipped the script

on every single person that we showed. Anyway, it was really the beginning of a great journey for for all of for me for sure, I'll say for us as well, and a journey that continues. So you know that film that we see equal film is just as relevant today

as it was three years ago. And I love the way you say it's about flipping the script because one of the things that we keep encountering is these myths, these false narratives that are still alive in the world, and they still get perpetuated, and we have to be very overt in helping people see that that's not the reality of our world. But we have to stop giving them air. And you know, we talk a lot about

the impact that advertising can have in our world. As you know, Madonna P ANDNG is the world's largest advertiser, and we know that we can have a really big impact with our voice and that's why we call it our superpower. And we've committed to use our voice in advertising and all other media to really tackle bias and to speak out on issues that are important to us, important to our employees, and important to all the people

that buy our products. And we know that advertising can spark conversations, it can create dialogue that really changes mindset. You know, are Always Like a Girl campaign is a great example of that. Right when we started that campaign, only nineteen percent of those that we herbeyed thought that the expression like a girl stood for something positive. It was really seen as a derogatory comment, Oh you do this like a girl today? And this is really only

five years after that. For Super Bowl ad more than people associate the phrase like a girl with something positive, with something empowering. So from over eight in five years, that's changing mindsets. And you know, Madonna, you and I. We've talked a lot about how advertising has changed, right, how consumers expectation of advertising has changed, making it really important for brands and companies to speak out or have a voice on these kind of issues, on what's happening

in a world today. Why is this so important? Well, I mean you know, this year, UM, you guys won Marketer of the Decade at can Lion, and I think you know it's beak because you have been the world's leader of understanding the need for transparency, for change, for ending gender bias, for using your voice to be a

force of good in this world. And you know I watch you guys, and you have been such a driving force for gender equity, UM, from not only we see equal, but to all of the different initiatives that you've put through at P and G. So nobody really knows more than you guys of the power of connection, UM, the power of connection based on empathy and love. So I think that you guys truly understand that six of the United States believes that companies are where the power for

change will come from, not governments. UM. And so you know, as the world's largest advertiser, where you have taken the world with the advertising that you support and taking the risks has made all advertisers have to rise with that tide. And I think that's, you know, a miracle. I really really do. I think it's a miracle. Um. I never dreamt that I would see anything like that in my lifetime. Um, from when I was, you know, fifteen years old watching

Melrose Place want to move to New York City. So uh, anyway, it's it's a joy and it and you and obviously it's what every generation needs is for brands to be brave, you know. Um. One of the things that we kind of hold as a mission of ours is to drive the accurate and authentic portrayal of all people in our advertising. So that means, you know, multicultural people represented authentically. It means showing dad's changing diapers because that's what they do.

It means showing men doing dishes and cleaning the floors. It means showcasing like multigenerational and blended family, same sex couples, single parents, single parent households, people with disabilities. Um. And it means showing women who look like real women. So authenticity is very important to us, and you have been an important partner in that mission with us. So why is authenticity today so important in your mind? UM? Well, I can say for the brand UM, which I've worked

on for about three years now. UM, you know, just recently we made it a no retouching brand, so nothing on the face gets retouched, which is an extraordinary move. You know, everybody gets zits if you have it on our set on that day, it's going to be shown because it's real and it's authentic. And I think that people are so awareness now of because the world is so transparent um in many many ways, people are so

aware of false messages and false hope. Young women especially want to be authentic, want to be want to be accepted as their authentic selves. That's why we see body positivity is such a huge part of the world. It's why you know, we see diversity as being absolutely must have because we are all equal. I think the future, I think coming out of COVID, coming out of a very painful real time, will make us want to be even more real with one another, tell the truth to

one another. I think. I think that's so well said. And I think authenticity is um as you say, what people aspire to. And I think when when you don't have it. You know, the flip side is of the words and the pictures don't match, whether it's in the issue that you're standing up for or how you're portraying people in the advertising. Um. In today's world, you get called on that as we should, right because consumers, uh, society communities today are holding us to a hired standard.

And I think that's so good for all of us. So yes, that's that's what authenticity can provide. You know. One of the other things we talked about system changes and the need for system changes to really advance progress. And another change that's really important in advertising is equal

representation in the creative supply chain. So so not only in front of the camera, who are we filming and what are we developing in the content of our campaigns, but behind the camera and making sure that uh, in our in our company, in the agencies that we work with on the creative with the directors and producers behind the camera, were really aspiring for a quality and full intersectional equality. Uh. Now, as you said at p and you know, we've we've made some great progress there. We've

got a fifty fifty brand team across our company. We've got fifty fifty representation at the major agencies, the creative agencies that we work with and in North America behind the camera, more than half of our ads are directed by women. So progress, uh, progress, But we're not done and we have a little bit more to do. But that's certainly been an important driver for us. I think

that's absolutely right. So much of our focus was the front of what happened, but now it is more the focuses on who's behind the camera well, and and we know in many cases it delivers such a better result, right, yes, yes, that's part of It's the end to end, it delivers such a great result and free the BID I think has been a huge part of that. Um. There are other organizations that have been a big part of it.

Are super Bowl ad this year, UM for l A UM, which I can't believe I had a Super Bowl this year. But UM, anyway, we isn't that amazing? Yeah, it just feels like what and but we had more than fift behind the camera. UM. Our editor was female, our our executive producer was female. Director obviously was female. UM. On my side of the table, everybody was female except for one man. And it felt incredible. To have so many

women create such a big, big ad. So, Madonna, you know that the advertising industry is still one of the industries that is largely seen as a man's industry still today. Um. In fact, there's a study done by the Gina Davis Institute that found across some two thousand advertisements that they looked at, only one third of the roles in any

advertisement went to women. They also found that women had signal efficantly lass screen time um, and that they spoke about less than men did in terms of the dialogue and commercials. The other conclusion that they found, which I thought was really interesting and it's obvious but still interesting, is that just putting more women in commercials and giving them more speaking parts is not going to solve the problem in the industry. That it was the teams behind

the advertising that had to change. So what that means is more creative officers, more women writing scripts, and more women directing them. That's another example of a real system change that needs to happen. Well, you know what does this mean for women of color, for multicultural women, because

that that also becomes that's even harder. It's such a problem for how things work because it just doesn't get us the best product, It doesn't give us the best outcome, the best messaging, the best creative, the best advertising, because we're just under utilizing all the talent that's of eliable to us. You know, we just did an led job and we hired a young black woman as our photographer

and a young Latina director. We knew that we wanted women of color to do this job for us, and we were not going to take no for an answer. I don't know any other way than to try and support these young up and coming multicultural women. Speaking of that, Madonna, developing up and coming multicultural women in advertising. Tell us about see it be It, So see it be It is. Um the can Lions mentoring program for young women creatives, and um, they come from all over the world, and um,

I'm the ambassador right now. So oh no, I'm the chairperson. I don't know they have all these titles. You're important in this very important. I am very I'm like an

uber mentee mentor at this point. But anyway, the point is is that mentorship is really, in so many ways the answer to breaking down systems, because that one on one relationship teaches me so much about the young What these young women need, UM, how who I am and how I can give it, UM, what I know and what I can say, and then what I don't know, and and they can answer for me. You know. It's such a two way street, and I think my benefit

is way greater than their's. That's a great program, and they are some of the luckiest women in advertising to be coached and mentored by you, and they worked hard to get there, I mean really hard. There you go. Well, Madonna, it's been great, and you're such a good friend and such an extraordinary visionary and you're such a good role model for using your platform for good. So I have a final question for you, and it's a two part question. What do we need to tackle next for gender equality

and within the advertising industry? What's the next frontier? I I really think that in order for our country and our economy to grow, we have to take on childcare and what that means to working women UM in this country. Once that is solved and universal childcare actually happens, that is when we will have true equality. You're exactly right. I'm so glad that you said that. We have talked

about this many times in this podcast. We will not have equality in the workplace until we have equality at home. And given that women take a disproportionate responsibility for home and family, universal childcare would be a huge accelerator for equality. Yes, it trans sends everything. It's universal in the industry. I think what's next is that? UM, I don't know. I think it's it's such a hard time. UM. I think that really what's next. And when I've been really lucky

to work on is brand relevancy and brand reputation. UM. I think that is you know, what people truly want and is what really does make it really does make a huge difference. UM within you know, whatever industry that you're working in. I think that's exactly right. And uh, Madonna, I just want to say thank you for using your superpower to change the world through your platform, whether it's advertising, creative,

your ideas. Um and and frankly you're mentoring, you know, helping to bring other people into this field and let their voices be heard as well. So it's been a pleasure. Thanks for spending time with us, Thanks for having me. What a great and powerful conversation. We all owe a huge thanks to Madonna Badger for working to change an entire industry, and for ensuring that commercials and ads portray women truthfully and authentically. Here are some of the key

points that I got out of a conversation. First, media, as we know it is one of the most powerful influences in our lives, which is why we need to hold advertisers and producers accountable for what they show. If we want to get to equal, we need to make sure that advertising depicts women as they truly are, as leaders, as contributors, powerful and three dimensional. And as Madonna reminds us, we all have the ability to advance progress, each of

us in our own way. For Madonna, that meant using her experience in advertising to change the way women are portrayed no longer as objects, but it's actual human beings. You can see Madonna's groundbreaking video at Women Not Objects dot com and you can check out We See Equal on YouTube. Now. This is the final episode in our special six part series Getting to Equal, and I want to thanks Caroline Taskdat and Deianna Bass for guest hosting and for showing how we can all help to make

progress towards equality. You can listen to all six episodes of Getting to Equal on Seneca's Conversations on power and purpose. Have a great day. 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. If you'd like to join the Seneca Women Network, go to Seneca Women dot com. There you'll get access to exclusive events and workshops, plus updates on new podcasts

and other opportunities to get involved. Four