5 Famous Ads You Didn’t Know Were Made by Women
Written By: Jackson Borman, Copywriter and Anna Doherty, Social Media Coordinator
As anyone who has seen Mad Men knows, throughout the history of advertising, women have had to fight for the respect and recognition they deserve.
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’ve spent the last few weeks digging through some of the coolest, most successful, and straight up legendary ad campaigns that you might not have known were made by women! Here are our five favorites.
1. I Love NY
This can’t-miss symbol of New York was originally a campaign for the state’s tourism department and was led by two trailblazing women in the world of advertising, Jane Maas and Mary Wells Lawrence.
Their idea for the campaign was to treat New York like a product, not like a tourist destination. The end campaign used commercials like this one and began airing in 1977:
2. Together
The return of The King (non-Ohioans might know him as simply, LeBron James) to Cleveland in 2014 sparked a huge opportunity for Nike; its signature athlete, one of the greatest of all time, was coming home with the goal to finally bring a championship to his home town. This is the ad that followed:
The brains behind the ad, Jordan Dinwiddie had just graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2013, making the legendary video one of her first post-grad campaigns. The award-winning ad would go on to receive attention from sports and news outlets alike, all while rallying a city around it’s chosen one. LeBron and the Cavs would go on to win the NBA championship in 2016, further immortalizing the player and the ad in basketball history.
3. A Diamond is Forever
For a classic example of how advertising can sculpt an entire category, look no further than “A Diamond is Forever.” The classic line debuted in 1948 and has appeared in every De Beers ad since.
The brainchild of copywriter Mary Frances Gerety, this slogan flipped the engagement ring industry on its head. In 1940, only 10% of brides were wearing diamonds on their fingers, while today they are expected by soon-to-be fiancés everywhere. Thanks to its success AdAge selected “A Diamond is Forever” as the best tagline of the century in 1999.
4. The Axe Effect
Originally known by its English name, “The Lynx Effect,” this campaign has become one of the most recognizable in modern advertising. While its dramatic production built around the idea of making a man’s wildest sexual dreams come true might lead you to believe it was created by men, it is actually the work of award-winning Creative Director Tiger Savage King.
The campaign positioned the deodorant brand as the key to making any man irresistible to the opposite sex, and while iconic, came under fire for its hyper-sexualized representation of women, causing Unilever (Axe’s parent company) to move in a different direction in recent years.
5. We Try Harder
In the 1960s, Avis rental cars was trailing behind the industry leader Hertz, and needed a new ad campaign to make up some ground. What they did next would continue to be taught in every advertising class for the rest of all time. The iconic We Try Harder Campaign:
Copywriter Paula Green came up with the idea to reposition second place as a positive, and admitted later on that thanks to difficulties of being a woman in advertising in the 1960s, “‘We Try Harder’ [was] somewhat the story of my life.”
These campaigns and the women who made them have gone down in advertising history, and rightfully so. The only thing more inspiring than their creativity is perhaps their determination to infiltrate an industry with a reputation for being rampant boy’s club. And that’s putting it nicely.
While statistically speaking, women have made strides in the advertising world since the days of Don Draper and co., the fight for opportunity and representation for other minority groups in the advertising industry continues.
Here are a few really cool diversity initiatives that are helping to make a positive impact on the ad industry and are worth digging into:
Multicultural Advertising Intern Program
Women Who Design
DiverseCreatives.com
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Invisible Creatives
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