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Go woke, go broke

Ah, I found and read the actual study: https://www.unstereotypealliance.or...INCLUSIVE ADVERTISING (Business case) WEB.pdf

It's about less than people seem to think. That inclusivity is about women. Their calculated index is the "GENDER UNSTEREOTYPE METRIC (GUM)." (And it's only in caps because I copy and pasted that from a title.) They don't even calculate their index for any other categories than men and women. I guess the UN Women part should have been a clue.

It's stuff like Mars discovering that they're selling more chocolate if they include more women in the ads....


You misunderstood how they measured the supposed diversity of the ads. You are correct that their metric for diversity was the so-called "gender unstereotype metric" (GUM). But the GUM is merely the following single question (asked separately about male and female characters):

How much do you agree or disagree with the following statement: This advertising presents a positive image of the (male/female) character/s that sets a good example for others: strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree?​

So, the GUM does not directly measure diversity at all. The study authors claim it indirectly does because they claim to have data showing that it correlates with measures of diversity "especially for females" (e.g., diversity of skin color, portrayal of women over 40, etc.), although they do not indicate how strong these correlation are.

For that reason and others, the study does not support the conclusions it purports to. Maybe more on this tomorrow...
 
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So, the GUM does not directly measure diversity at all.

Pretty sure that's what I was saying too, a bit more explicitly further down in the message. And not just directly. It doesn't measure it, period.

And yes, it's just a study of GUM, nothing else.

As for the inclusivity and diversity stuff... really, it's not even about a calculated correlation. They just "deduced commonalities" in the top 25% and bottom 25% of the spectrum to "find key drivers." And it's not just that they don't show the correlation data with that diversity stuff, they don't even say what correlates with what. They just say that Kantar has 65 other metrics that they deduced commonalities with GUM, but really, what, all 65 to the same degree? I mean, they just said something about key drivers, which would suggest otherwise.

But thanks for bringing up that question, because only now it occurs to me that it doesn't actually measure what you'd normally think of as "unstereotype" either. Someone could think a character is a good example to others BECAUSE they fit a stereotype.
 
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Pretty sure that's what I was saying too.


What you got wrong is that you said (1) that in the study "inclusivity is about women," implying (2) that the GUM is some sort of measure of the inclusivity of women in the ads. Both (1) and (2) are wrong.

And not just directly. It doesn't measure it, period.


Well, if A correlates with B, and B correlates with C, then A correlates with C and hence is an indirect measure of C, although possibly a poor one.

As for the inclusivity and diversity stuff... really, it's not even about a calculated correlation. They just "deduced commonalities" in the top 25% and bottom 25% of the spectrum.


The wording of that paragraph of the report appears (to me, as a statistician) to be saying with non-technical language that they performed a factor analysis of the diversity variables and then used regression to determine which factors best discriminated between the first and fourth quartiles of the GUM.

And it's not just that they don't show the correlation data with that diversity stuff, they don't even say what correlates with what.


They probably do know the correlations between the individual diversity variables and the GUM because they likely did the analysis that the wording of the report hints they did (or something similar that would yield those correlations as well). The fact that those data were not presented doesn't mean they aren't known. After all, hardly any data were presented.
 
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What you got wrong is that you said that GUM was a measure of the degree of female representation in the ads. It is not.

Fair enough, I confess that I was a bit misled at that point. I should perhaps have been in less of a hurry to read through it.

Well, if A correlates with B, and B correlates with C, then A correlates with C and hence is an indirect measure of C, although possibly a poor one.

Yes, but at the very least it's not a guaranteed causation by C. Which is what is being pushed.

And in their case it's so trivial to debunk, that their own case studies do that. E.g., the Bayer fairy tale princesses have nothing to do with portrayal of women over 40. Or the Cadbury one also had nothing to do with women over 40, or most other inclusion criteria. So you obviously can skip some of those 65 criteria just fine.

Plus, as you said, just calculating GUM won't tell you anything about that. You could make an all white male ad for something and present them in a positive light, and it would score just as high on GUM as a mixed one. Like, you don't even need to think up a brand new ad. You could take the Cadbury ad and replace every single person on the bus with the whitest Caucasians, and it would probably score the same on GUM.

I can see a correlation in the fact that global corporations that have the sense to not insult their potential customers, also have figured out by now that they're selling to a lot of different people. You know, part of the "global" part in global corporation.
 
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I missed all those gay couples in adverts decades back, along with the Asian couples etc.

They're still there, just depends which TV channel you watch, and possibly hte time of day - I think companies are being more selective about which channels they advertise on. Demographics or something like that.
 
There's a difference between inclusivity in advertising and harping on systemic racism and injustice, even if they have to invent it. "Woke" is more like the latter.

Interesting. A few typical things I've seen described as "woke madness" include:
  • Changing the labels on toy aisles to no longer be 'boys' and 'girls'.
  • Using female models in clothing adds that are closer than previously to average American BMI (though still under average)
  • Putting very minimal facial hair on a medieval warrior woman in a video game.
  • Changing an animated candy to wearing flats instead of heels.
 
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Well, as has almost everything else at this point. But then the term was coined in the '30s as "staying woke" (meaning being aware) of injustices towards blacks, and then popularized again in and after 2014 by BLM to mean the same thing. And then it broadened to mean pretty much any injustice an activist was claiming to fight on their cell phone, and felt like claiming is a systemic and institutional issue, from race to gender to trans rights to body positivity to whatever.

Nowadays it's more like used pejoratively, and about almost everything, because previously it WAS used to mean almost anything and everything one feels like fighting against by its proponents.
 
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It also doesn't go unnoticed when someone just unilaterally declares victory and pats themselves on the back, without actually even trying to have a sound argument. Because see above, the actual study supported none of those claims.

The whole thread is a sound argument. Your side lost.
 
the length of the list of companies that went woke and then broke kind of speaks for itself
 
the length of the list of companies that went woke and then broke kind of speaks for itself

Next to the length of the list of companies that go broke without any "wokeness" involved it seems less conclusive.
 
FWIW I don't even care much if they go broke, and I sincerely doubt that any corporation actually went woke as more than a PR stunt. Small private companies like mom and pop shops may go with their ideology, multi-billion dollar corporations go for whatever PR image or stunt they think (correctly or not) will make them more money.

I was just commenting on a dishonest "study".

If they actually wanted to measure diversity in advertising, they could do just that quite objectively. Just take a marketing campaign, and count how many groups it represents, put that in your correlation. If it supports the hypothesis, cool.

But that's not what they did. They used their "Gender Unstereotype Metric", which is actually ironically named, because it has nothing to do with stereotypes, and they didn't split it by gender. In fact, they even say they averaged male and female scores for each company. And it only measures whether those characters are positively or negatively portrayed, which would only measure being non-stereotypical if the only stereotypes about both genders were negative.

ALL the correlation they actually showed was basically: ad campaigns which put their customers in a more flattering light do better. Whop-de-do. We knew that for decades. Why do you think those tampon ads showed those women swimming, riding, etc, instead of, say, being a miserable wine mom? Or why do you think car companies stopped presenting women as just some accessories for a stud with a car? Why do you think beer ads show fit young people having a party, and not, say, some loner couch potato in his underwear drowning his sorrows in the bottle?

But OK, you want to use GUM to support diversity? Again, you can actually do that in a more direct and objective way. Like calculate that GUM by race, see how much that affects the results.

But nope. What they did was literally this handwave: well, companies who did X tended to also do Y, so Y must be the cause. Even though even even their own case studies pretty much debunk that causation.

Essentially what they did is like me arguing to the effect of:
- people who order more over the internet are lazy
- a lot of people who order over the internet have a pet, since they order pet food
- therefore having a pet makes you lazy

And then that article padded it with more of their own interpretation of "woke" that neither the study, nor its press release, actually claimed.
 
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Also, let me introduce people to this funny concept: articles and studies written by PR. Unlike ads, these don't tell you "go buy X". They masquerade as serious articles telling you stuff like "the era of IT people going to work in jeans is over, companies prefer a professional suit now" and incidentally mention Men's Wearhouse. (Actual PR campaign back in the early 2000s, after the dotcom bubble had burst, and yes, paid for by Men's Wearhouse.) Or that some professor calculated the formula for procrastination... without defining the units or how you measure any of the stuff in the formula. And, oh, look, he has a consulting firm for hiring, so *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink* you know what I mean. (Yep, another actual case.) Or that whole small villages on the mountain only have at most a dozen schoolkids, means there won't be enough people to pay for your retirement unless you pay for a private pension, and oh, look, they actually mention an insurance company that offers such pensions. (Ditto.)

And the phenomenon is ubiquitous. In local newspapers half the articles can be written by PR companies. They're professionally written and they're free, so hey. But they get into major newspapers, TV and even gaming sites too. And yes, it includes more (non-peer reviewed) studies and papers than you'd think. They just go shopping around for some academic who'll put his or her signature on it, in exchange for adequate remuneration. Invariably they eventually find one.

And frankly this whole study reeks of a PR op funded by Kantar. And not even the subtle kind. Most of the data comes from them, it's their criteria for inclusion, and they're mentioned dozens of times in it. And oh, look, they offer seminars for inclusion and whatnot :p


Which brings me to: was the list of companies chosen randomly or cherry-picked by Kantar or how? The study doesn't even mention the word "random".
 
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If they actually wanted to measure diversity in advertising, they could do just that quite objectively. Just take a marketing campaign, and count how many groups it represents, put that in your correlation. If it supports the hypothesis, cool.

But that's not what they did. They used their "Gender Unstereotype Metric", which is actually ironically named, because it has nothing to do with stereotypes, and they didn't split it by gender. In fact, they even say they averaged male and female scores for each company. And it only measures whether those characters are positively or negatively portrayed, which would only measure being non-stereotypical if the only stereotypes about both genders were negative.


Indeed for each ad in the study they had measures of 65 characteristics of the characters portrayed, including the "inclusivity" variables age, ethnicity, skin tone, body type [and] sexual orientation.... So, if they wanted to test the hypothesis that "inclusivity" in advertising boosts sales, why did they use GUM, a measure of positive portrayal that only correlates—to an undisclosed degree—with these direct measures of inclusivity, rather than do the obvious thing: use the direct measures of inclusivity themselves? We can't say for sure, but one obvious possibility is that the direct measures of inclusivity didn't show the positive results they hoped for, but GUM, a measure of positive portrayal, did. So they used GUM and argued (poorly) that it can be considered a surrogate measure of inclusivity.
 
Indeed for each ad in the study they had measures of 65 characteristics of the characters portrayed, including the "inclusivity" variables age, ethnicity, skin tone, body type [and] sexual orientation.... So, if they wanted to test the hypothesis that "inclusivity" in advertising boosts sales, why did they use GUM, a measure of positive portrayal that only correlates—to an undisclosed degree—with these direct measures of inclusivity, rather than do the obvious thing: use the direct measures of inclusivity themselves? We can't say for sure, but one obvious possibility is that the direct measures of inclusivity didn't show the positive results they hoped for, but GUM, a measure of positive portrayal, did. So they used GUM and argued (poorly) that it can be considered a surrogate measure of inclusivity.

Honestly, that was my suspicion too.
 
Just to add, there is actually evidence to the contrary: too much of some kinds of diversity in ads can lower the effectiveness, including from minorities. For example, mixed-race couples are perceived lower than same-race minority couples or (depending on who you trust) even white couples. In fact, they can even attract more negativity towards your brand. You have better results just showing a black couple or an Asian couple, than having the more diverse alternative of showing an interracial couple.

Source (among others):
https://develop.sfsu.edu/mixed-race-couples-still-controversial-many-sf-state-study-finds

I eagerly await someone telling me that the San Francisco State University and its students (who were the lab rats, so to speak) is some fascist trumpist organization who can't be trusted, because the results don't match what they want to hear :p
 
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I can remember an Australian advertising study, from waaaaay back in the day, that pointed out that black African males only appeared in Australian adverts as bar tenders, musicians or athletes.

For a while, I was noticing it all the time, but less so now.

I think this is no longer true here, but mainly because we now show so many adverts that are imported from the UK and the USA (with Australian accents dubbed over the vision).
 
Yes really.

Haven't you noticed the 'Oil of Olay' commercials? They changed the name here (from Ulan to Oley) and then started running the American commercials.

All the bleak Cadbury adverts (kid buying mum chocolate, kid offering chocolate to girl on the bus, girl in the petrol station, Dad after the interview) are all UK commercials. Have a look on youtube and you can see them with the original storylines and accents. (Girl in the garage has an Edinburgh accent I think.) I guess Australians were thinking all those bleak, gritty, backgrounds were in Melbourne... :P

Pretty sure I've seen American car commercials, and American commercials for soft drinks etc.

They're really obvious because of the makeup of the families and the people in the backgrounds.

Once you start seeing all the Americans, you'll see them everywhere.
 
In the "Go anti-woke, go broke?" basket...

I'm seeing a few people on Facebook cancelling their Washington Post subscriptions because Jeff Bezos wouldn't let the WP editorial board endorse Kamala Harris.

Not sure how that'll translate to their financial position.
 
I'm always a bit amused - or I should say perhaps negatively amused in the head-shaking sense - when that phrase "enemy of the people" is bandied about by such folks as Trump, considering that at least some of us who remember going to school and paying attention and reading the assignments might recall first running across that phrase in a play about science falling victim to political opportunism and stupidity. Truth crushed by the fist of irony.
 
WP? Or the people cancelling their subscriptions?
I think Trump has often referred to the press, including the Post, as well of course as the "failing New York Times," as the enemy of the people. I think at times that they are, but not for the same reason. The policy of the press in general of sanewashing Trump's outrageous behavior and statements may come home to roost. He thinks they're his enemy, but when push comes to shove, they're not.
 
In the "Go anti-woke, go broke?" basket...

I'm seeing a few people on Facebook cancelling their Washington Post subscriptions because Jeff Bezos wouldn't let the WP editorial board endorse Kamala Harris.

Not sure how that'll translate to their financial position.
Owned fully by Bezos through a shell company so it's unlikely we will ever hear about the impact on the paper's bottom line. I will say that it is hard to believe that there are people out there who are on the fence but would be convinced by a WAPO editorial endorsing Harris. Does sort of reveal they were only kidding with that Democracy Dies in Darkness shtick.
 
I'll need that explained, please.
After Trump was elected they started using that (on February 22, 2017) as their motto, much as the NY Times is "All the News That's Fit to Print." The pretty obvious implication was that Trump had brought on the darkness and the WAPO would shine the line to prevent democracy's death. Now in an election in which a whole lot of people think could mark the end of democracy in America, they won't tell us where they stand?

Note: While I dislike Trump and intend to vote Democrat this year to express my displeasure with the GOP, I don't personally believe the hyperventilating about the end of democracy. But if one does believe it? They should be shouting from the rooftops to vote for Harris and not for Trump.
 
After Trump was elected they started using that (on February 22, 2017) as their motto, much as the NY Times is "All the News That's Fit to Print." The pretty obvious implication was that Trump had brought on the darkness and the WAPO would shine the line to prevent democracy's death. Now in an election in which a whole lot of people think could mark the end of democracy in America, they won't tell us where they stand?

Note: While I dislike Trump and intend to vote Democrat this year to express my displeasure with the GOP, I don't personally believe the hyperventilating about the end of democracy. But if one does believe it? They should be shouting from the rooftops to vote for Harris and not for Trump.
Apparently their owner won't let them.
 
Apparently their owner won't let them.
We still have a pretty good sense of what the WaPo Editorial Board were going to say, though.

At a moment when The Post should have been stepping forward to sound the clarion call about the multiple dangers that Donald Trump poses to the nation and the world, it has chosen instead to pull back. That is the wrong choice at the worst possible time.​

 
as predicted, the natural consequence of wokeness is a billionaire buying a newspaper and suppressing the editorial opinions of the writers. and thus, all is right in the world.
 
Kind of just looks like the usual consequence of pandering to the woke or anti-woke activist crowd, to be honest. Eventually they'll turn on you for not being radical enough. Reminds me of stuff like Disney at its most activist stage still getting attacked for not having more gay representation, while people who just ignore them eventually get ignored in favour of targets that do feed the trolls.

Really, there's a reason why we had a "don't feed the trolls" internet wisdom since at least the early 2000's. (Or why you shouldn't answer to spammers, for that matter.) The worst you can do is have an "oh noes, I'm totally not <insert what he accused you of>, look at how much I'm totally the opposite" reaction, because then you showed them that they have the power to get a reaction out of you. They'll do it again, because that's what basement dwellers do. Regardless of whether it's about ye olde Linux vs Windows flame wars, or Nintendo vs Sony, or Android vs iPhone, or the newer "progressive" trolls.

Once you get down the rabbithole of trying to pander to one group of trolls, there is no end to that. Like, you could reassure them that you're totally on the Linux side, but then you get dragged into why you're a shill if you use a corporate distribution like SUSE or RedHat instead of compiling your own, or using a company-framework-based GUI like KDE instead of Gnome, or even a GUI at all instead of command line, or Vi instead of EMACS, or for still playing Windows games via WINE emulation, or even for using Linux at all instead of BSD. I actually personally had a coworker which switched from evangelizing Linux to 'you're a shill if you don't use BSD' when Linux got too mainstream for his trolling.

As I was saying that's what the kind of people who measure their success and influence in the world by trolling do.
 
I don't much get what the preceding post has to do with Washington Post's decision not to take a stand, unless one is still delusional enough to believe that one must be some kind of radical to oppose Trump. I suppose that's a consequence of his and others' shifting of the center toward the right, but I don't buy it.
 
I don't much get what the preceding post has to do with Washington Post's decision not to take a stand, unless one is still delusional enough to believe that one must be some kind of radical to oppose Trump. I suppose that's a consequence of his and others' shifting of the center toward the right, but I don't buy it.
Well, it used to be that the press was supposed to be impartial, and just report on the facts. In fact, even make sure to represent both sides of an issue, when people's opinions were involved.

In fact, we used to have the term "yellow journalism" for the kind that didn't. It was a pejorative term. It took about until the start of the 20'th century in the USA to fight for proper journalism instead of that, later in other parts of the world. Because we've seen what kind of nonsense we get when the newspapers decide to just pander to one political side instead, be it the jingoism that led to the American-Spanish war, or the '30s German press, or whatever. Or more recently what the USSR press does. Getting the press to just report the facts instead of putting a spin on it was actually a step forward.

But now the delusional trolls (on both sides of the spectrum) have turned that on its head: you're somehow a horrible person if you DON'T do biased partisan journalism instead. Or even just not biased enough.

If you still can't see the difference, well... :p
 
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I am not expecting the Washington Post or any other agency to slant the news. But that paper, like most, has an editorial board which traditionally has taken positions.

I am not entirely convinced the press has been truly impartial already in its concerted attempt to minimize Trump's insane utterances and lies and rants, so as to appear impartial, as if this were not already putting a spin on reporting. Of course, no matter how fair you try to be, there is some room for how you report even the naked truth. We much choose words, and we often must choose what parts of a long and complex utterance are reported. The decision, for example, to characterize a lie as an untruth or a misstatement or something else, is an editorial decision, and even when we try to be fair we cannot entirely avoid it. But quite apart from this, I do not believe that there has been a sudden shift of the definition of fair journalism to exclude editorial opinion in the part of a journal where that is expected.

I do see a difference between editorial policy and unbiased reporting, and I think it a mistake not to.
 
Oh, the press hasn't been impartial for a while now. It's not like the WP pioneered that. If anything, Fox had. Doesn't mean I welcome it on either side. BS is not like Newtonian mechanics. You don't counter it with equal and opposite BS. Just saying :p
 
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