Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Touch The Pickle: Marketing Gender Equality

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

“What player has won the most Wimbledon singles titles,” Google will tell you it’s Roger Federer with 8 wins. But that’s incorrect. Martina Navratilova has 9. This week, we look at remarkable ideas that promote gender equality. Including an idea called Correct the Internet.com. And one that challenged menstruation taboos with a program called “Touch the pickle.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all the teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Since 1851, the old bits in the New York Times have been dominated by white men. But with a column called Overlooked,

the Times has been adding stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported. One of those stories caught my eye. It was about a woman named Jackie Mitchell. Back in 1931, Mitchell was just 17 years old. What made her unusual was the fact she was on the roster of an all-male minor league baseball team in Tennessee called the Chattanooga Lookouts. Mitchell was the only female pitcher in the league. She threw left-handed and had a very deceptive sinker in her pitching repertoire. The owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts was a publicity seeker and probably felt the novelty of a female pitcher would draw fans during the depths of the Depression. The week after Mitchell's professional contract was signed,

the New York Yankees were on their way back from spring training and stopped off in town for an exhibition game. 4,000 Chattanooga Lookout fans were in the stands and Jackie Mitchell took to the mound in the first inning. The crowd stirred when the mighty Babe Ruth stepped up to the plate. He swung hard at the first pitch and missed. He swung even harder at the second pitch as it whistled by him.

At that point, Ruth demanded that the umpire inspect the ball. He was utterly baffled by the pitcher's delivery and thought there had to be something suspicious going on. The umpire took a good, long look at it, then yelled, Play ball! The third pitch sailed right past Ruth and just left him standing there, looking at Mitchell. When the umpire called him out, the Bambino flung his bat away in disgust.

Next up was Lou Gehrig. He took what a reporter described as three hefty swings and was struck out two. Young Jackie Mitchell received a standing ovation. hefty swings and was struck out two. Young Jackie Mitchell received a standing ovation. Next inning, a pitcher replaced Mitchell and her team proceeded to lose to the mighty Yankees 14-4. The next day, the New York Times ran an article headlined, Girl Pitcher Fans Ruth and Gehrig. Many wondered if the two strikeouts were real or just a stunt to draw press attention.

It just seemed improbable that a 17-year-old girl could strike out two of the best hitters in the game. Jackie Mitchell had learned to play baseball under the tutelage of her father, and the family lived close to future Hall of Famer Dazzy Vance, who was considered the premier strikeout pitcher of the 1920s. Vance taught her how to throw a drop ball, better known today as a sinker. And that day against the Yankees, she was up against batters who had never seen her before, she had a devastating sinker, and being a lefty against two left-handed batters

gave her an advantage. The day after the infamous game, Jackie Mitchell's contract was cancelled. Many believed the baseball commissioner wanted her gone because he was embarrassed by the episode. And that was nine years before the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was formed, which

was immortalized in the movie A League of Their Own. Jackie Mitchell went on to pitch for a few other junior teams, but hung up her glove at the age of 23, then went to work in her father's optometry office. She died in 1987 at the age of 74. The former director of the National Women's History Museum

says the problem with that infamous day was that Jackie Mitchell beat Ruth and Gehrig, but she didn't actually win because she didn't get to keep her contract, and she has been long forgotten. History, and the Internet, has a convenient way of overlooking female achievements.

The advertising industry hasn't been particularly kind to women either. While there are a lot of women working in the ad biz, few of them were ever promoted to the top. While that is changing, some remarkable initiatives have been created by the advertising industry recently to promote gender equality. All of these ideas go well beyond mere advertising campaigns. They actually empower women, facilitate real change, and in one instance that would make Jackie Mitchell happy, they actually correct the internet. You're under the influence. The biggest, most revered awards show in the advertising business

happens in Cannes, France every June. Officially, it's called the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. During this festival, juries presided over by senior advertising professionals evaluate over 25,000 entries across 30 categories from 87 countries. The winner in each category is awarded a prestigious trophy in the shape of a lion. The categories range from film and video to outdoor billboards to print ads to radio, which I judged back in 2005, to design, entertainment, gaming, music and sports marketing, to name a few. But there is another interesting and meaningful category that I want to talk about today. It's called The Glass Lion, and it's awarded to culture-shifting creativity that positively impacts ingrained gender inequality, imbalances, or injustice. The name comes from the notion of smashing the glass ceiling.

The Glass Lion is given to work that not only calls attention to gender inequality, but to work that actually makes a tangible difference. In Honduras, the morning-after pill was outlawed in 2009. Despite the fact it's a medication approved by the World Health Organization and was legal in every other country in Latin America. Honduras is one of the most conservative areas in the region. It is so strict on this issue, women found taking the morning-after pill could be sentenced to six years in prison.

Since the ban of emergency contraception pills, more than 350,000 underage Honduran girls have given birth. One out of every four Honduran girls will become pregnant before turning 18 pill. And years of misinformation has convinced other women that taking the pill is the same as having an abortion, therefore making it taboo to even bring up, let alone discuss. For years, an organization called the Strategic Group for the Emergency Contraceptive Pill has been trying to get the ban overturned.

For 12 years, they made little progress. Everything was stacked against them. They had no budget for a massive marketing campaign, no support from the private sector, and zero institutionalized sexual health education. The traditional activist playbook had failed. So, the women's rights advocates enlisted advertising agency Ogilvy to help develop a plan. They began by trying to have discussions with governmental and diplomatic offices, but door after door was closed off to them.

That inability to get traction locally actually sparked an idea. If the organization couldn't get any attention in their own country, the solution was obvious. They had to leave their home territory. So Ogilvy and the activist group created the Morning After Island. The island was a wooden platform that floated in international waters outside Honduran jurisdiction. Frequent boat trips took women to the Morning After Island, where they could take the medication without fear of prosecution. It took four years of planning to create the morning after island.

First of all, the location of the floating island was critical, as nautical law and logistics were complicated. The privacy of the women was paramount, as was their safety, so factors such as the weather and tides had to be carefully considered. The short-term goal was to help as many women as possible reach the safety of the morning-after island. The long-term goal was to generate meaningful change for millions of Honduran women and raise their voices so the world could hear them.

The strategy was to create powerful, striking imagery to generate global awareness of the crisis and keep a significant amount of pressure on the government to repeal the ban. To do that, Ogilvy made emotional, short-form videos about the morning after island and posted them online for the world to see and share and to ask people to sign a petition to repeal the ban.

That petition generated over 2 million signatures from around the world. The videos gained coverage from hundreds of media outlets in 15 countries, which equated to over $30 million in free airtime. 180 million people saw the videos. 280 million people saw news stories about the morning after island. And, most importantly, the campaign put Honduras' first woman president under immense pressure to act. As a result, the president formed a new Ministry of Women's Rights to collaborate on a broad legislative proposal defending women's sexual, reproductive, and

civil rights. And on International Women's Day, the Strategic Group for the Emergency Contraceptive Pill, which had been ignored for 12 years, was invited to have a televised meeting with the president reaching an agreement on several key issues. The repeal of the ban is still being debated in Honduran Congress and until then the morning after island still floats in international waters. Back in 2017, tennis star Andy Murray was being interviewed

at a press conference at Wimbledon. I remember an interesting moment when Murray corrected a reporter when being asked a certain question. Andy, Sam is the first U.S. player to reach a major semifinal since 2009. How would you describe... Male player. I beg your pardon? Male player, right? Yes, first male player. That was very telling. The reporter had overlooked the fact Serena and Venus Williams had reached Wimbledon finals many times. Andy Murray knew and respected the fact.

That moment underlines a crippling aspect of modern culture, that women's achievements are so often overlooked or ignored. And it isn't just reporters who get it wrong. Internet search results overwhelmingly favor the achievements of male athletes over female athletes, even when the results are incorrect. The reason? The greater number of searches around male sports has led the search engines to prioritize inaccurate statistics. That got an advertising agency in New Zealand thinking.

DDB New Zealand was pitching the FIFA Women's World Cup. While researching facts about the world's top soccer players, the ad agency discovered that women held many of soccer's records. Yet, when asking simple, ungendered questions to find these facts, the Internet was incorrectly putting men ahead of the statistically superior women in its search results. When DDB expanded their searches, they found over 30 similar errors across many sports. For example,

which team has won the most basketball World Cup titles? The Internet says the USA and Yugoslavian teams have, with five titles each. The statistics say it's the USA women's team, who have won 11. Which player has won the most Wimbledon singles titles? The Internet says Roger Federer with 8. The statistics say it's Martina Navratilova with 9.

Which boxer has had the most title defenses? The Internet says Joe Lewis with 27. The statistics say it's Regina Halmich with 45. The list of errors is long. Now, if people report these inaccuracies using the search engine's feedback function, they can be noted and fixed. Except, most people have no idea where the search engine feedback function is. So, DDB New Zealand created an easy-to-use site called correcttheinternet.com. When an incorrect stat is found on the internet that prioritizes a male

athlete over a woman when the woman should rank higher, the tool on the Correct the Internet site makes it easy for anyone to send feedback with just a few clicks, which, if done on a large enough scale, will make a difference. DDB New Zealand then created a video for CorrecttheInternet.com featuring a young girl asking the Internet another question. Hey Internet, who has scored the most goals in international football? Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 118 goals in international football. What about Christine Sinclair?

How many goals has she scored in international football? Christine Sinclair has scored 190 goals in international football. Well, then, who scored the most goals in international football. Well then, her scored the most goals in international football. Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 118 goals in international football. That's not right. Are you sure? The answer isn't Cristiano Ronaldo. It's Canadian Christine Sinclair. The algorithms search engines use are trained by our human behavior, and the Internet has learned our human bias towards men.

It's a problem we all created. But by using correcttheinternet.com, it's a problem we have the power to fix. And while women's achievements are missing online, so are their credit histories. Millions of low-income women in Mexico are unable to become entrepreneurs for one simple reason. They have no credit histories with banks, so their loan applications are rejected. In January of 2021, WeCapital, a financial institution in Mexico, teamed up with their advertising agency to try and come up with not just an advertising campaign, but a real solution. While research showed that 83% of Mexican women have no formal

credit histories, it also revealed another fact. It's common throughout Latin America for women to take out weekly or monthly store credits. Shopkeepers take note of each item a customer buys and makes note of when that customer settles the bill. The problem was that these records are not recognized by the national financial institutions, leaving women without proof of their spending behavior. It was an interesting paradox. Women were denied loans, yet research also proved that women pay their bills more consistently than men.

So WeCapital and their ad agency created an initiative called Data Tienda, which translated means data shop. It allowed WeCapital to tap into the accounting records of shopkeepers throughout Mexico. Women could sign up on the Data Tienda website, provide records from five to ten different shopkeepers they did business with, and, once vetted, those records were converted into official credit histories. Almost immediately, over 10,000 women registered on the Data Tienda site, and over 2,300 received microloans for their new businesses.

This story is a reminder that great solutions start with defining the problem. At first glance, it appeared women had no credit histories. But that wasn't the actual problem. Women all over Latin America have credit histories they've built up all their lives. They just weren't being recognized by major lending institutions.

Women were invisible to the banking industry. Data tienda gave them visibility and sparked the possibility of long-term change. In India, menstruation has many taboos. For example, when girls and women are having their periods, they cannot step inside temples. They can't enter kitchens.

They can't touch drinking water. They're not allowed to water plants. They can only wash their hair after the fourth day. They are not allowed to exercise. And they are often confined to a separate room in the family home so they don't come into contact with anyone or anything. That prompted Whisper, a sanitary napkin brand owned by P&G in India, to do a survey among 1,100 women and 200 men across 10 cities.

The survey revealed that a shocking 65% of Indian women observed these age-old beliefs, but 82% wanted to break free of them. Research also showed that women feel restricted from achieving their dreams because of the irrational myths around periods. So, Whisper and its advertising agency set out to bust period taboos by asking women to touch the pickle. Of the many taboos in India for menstruating women, one of the strangest is that they are forbidden from touching pickle jars.

They're taught that the pickles will rot when a woman touches the pickle jar during her impure time. Whisper and its advertising agency thought that this irrational pickle taboo was so odd, it was an apt metaphor for all the other taboos that hold women back. Plus, it had the right tone and intrigue to lead to the taboo conversation. Advertising agency BBDO then created a touch-the-pickle video that begins with a young woman touching a pickle jar, much to the shock of her grandmother. She touched the pickle. She touched the pickle.

Oh, yes, she did. Oh, yes, she did. Oh, yes, she touched the pickle. Oh, yes, she did. Picks. Oh, yes, she touched the pickle. Yeah! Yeah, she touched the pickle. I touched the pickle. In periods, we say, don't wear white, don't go out, don't play, don't touch the pickle. I say, girls, let's break the taboos.

Go ahead and touch the pickle. Whisper. The Touch the Pickle video was launched across social media, radio, YouTube and television to spread the message. On-ground events were also organized. It became fuel and an open platform for women across India to question and bust period-related myths. To turn a subject that was once hidden into an open debate to change the mindset of entire families. Women from all walks of life, including celebrities,

shared their own taboo stories on social media and pledged support with the hashtag Touch the Pickle. Whisper invited anthropologists to talk about the origins of these existing taboos and explain their irrelevance in today's world. Stand-up comedians joined in.

Conversations were had on radio and TV, and a TEDx talk was given. As a result, over 2.9 million women pledged to touch the pickle. The video generated free media coverage worth over 6.1 million dollars in India and attracted stories from global media outlets including the BBC, Financial Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. Over 2 million people have watched the video on YouTube. Other feminine product brands have now joined the conversation, and leading Bollywood actors who traditionally never endorsed sanitary products have become the face of the brands. And Whisper's brand awareness climbed from 21% to over 90%.

It's amazing what you can achieve when you dare to touch the pickle. For all of history, women have championed social change, pioneered incredible innovations, and made invaluable contributions to society. But recent research reveals that women are represented in only 0.5% of recorded history, proving they are all too easily erased and their accomplishments are all too easily forgotten.

And when that happens, it creates gaps in opportunities and pay and impairs their ability to achieve their dreams. That's why correct the internet is such a powerful idea. With a global community of people willing to speak up and take tangible action, some of the gender biases that have been ruling our search engines can be reversed. In Honduras, it took a bold idea to fuel real change. Denied rights on land, they took to the sea to empower women and raise awareness of their situation around the world. Figuring out a way to get financial institutions to recognize women's credit histories will allow thousands of women in Mexico

to earn a living. And breaking centuries of myths and taboos around periods is helping empower women in India. All of these ideas were generated by advertising agencies, but none of the ideas were merely ads or commercials.

They were ideas that promoted tangible, real-world change. That's the power of creativity when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Research, Abby Forsythe. Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre.

Music provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. This is Season 12. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also like Putting Fans in Stands, How Sports Teams Sell Tickets, Season 9, Episode 3.

You'll find it in our archives wherever you listen to the show. You can now find our podcasts on the Apostrophe YouTube channel. And if you think there are too many ads in a show about advertising, you're not in a pickle. You can now listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

See you next week. Unfun fact. Only 5% of TV sports coverage is dedicated to women's sports. Mm-hmm. Just saying.