Abstract Book of the 3rd World Conference on Gender Equality
Year: 2025
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Gender Equality as a Brand Value in the Post-digital Media Scenario
Isabel Palomo-Domínguez, Rūta Tamošiūnaitė, and Jesús Segarra-Saavedra
ABSTRACT:
Post-digital society features an absolute hegemony of digital media and transmedia communication strategies, which include the confluence of many channels without excluding analogue experiences. It is a type of immersive communication that commercial brands take advantage of to launch their advertising campaigns. In this media scenario, some top brands choose to highlight gender equality as one of their relevant values, which allows them to better connect with a diverse audience. This work aims to reflect on the role of gender equality as an identity value of commercial brands. It carries out a discursive analysis of different brands in which gender equality has served as a basis for post-digital storytelling campaigns, considering the media, gender roles, symbols and the underlying intention, among other aspects. The results show that gender equality can reinforce the brand’s authenticity and engagement with the audience. Conclusions confirm that advertising highlights the discourse its target audience wants to hear to gain their approval. The question remains as to which discourses favour gender equality are born from a genuine commitment to an inclusive and fair society and which are simply a marketing strategy. To this uncomfortable question, a reassuring answer appears: 21st-century society still lacks messages in favour of gender equality that strive to strengthen this collective belief, so the work carried out by these brands, whether they have intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, may have positive effects.
Keywords: advertising, digital media, engagement, storytelling, transmedia strategies