Femvertising as a Postfeminist Marketing Strategy: The Sample of Nike, Molped and Elidor Ads

Abstract

Nowadays, brands create advertisements that emphasize gender equality by focusing on women and aiming to end gender inequality. Brands inspired by the postfeminist discourses use the public's changing perception changes on gender equality as marketing opportunities through their women-oriented advertising activities. Accordingly, this study discusses whether femvertising, as a critical approach against gender norms, overlaps with the purposes of feminist theory, and examines how this movement can impact the reproduction of gender inequality. In this respect, three advertising campaigns in Turkey, namely Nike's "This Is Us" (2017), Molped's "You Have a Girl's Word" (2020), and Elidor's "We're Not In" (2019) were analyzed within the conceptual framework of postfeminist discourses, taking account of the cultural conjuncture of Turkey. To investigate these campaigns, this article applies qualitative research through semiotic analysis. Our findings revealed that the advertisements, whose primary role is the marketing of goods, were mostly focused on selling products, rather than supporting the feminist movement. Besides, while attempting to change the stereotypes attributed to women within gender roles, women who fall outside of these stereotypes are marginalized. The analysis illustrates that the femvertising trend will not contribute to the women's struggle for gender equality unless it is committed to feminist principles and stops restricting the meaning of feminism to a single advertising slogan.