O Brother, Where Art Thou?

“People like Andrew Tate prey on the worst parts of our humanity. On insecurities, on fear, on prejudice, on entitlement,” says Alec Tooze, senior strategist at Impero. “Maybe the reason some young boys get swept up in it is because it’s speaking to some part of them, instead of not speaking to them at all. Which is what I fear we’re doing now.”

We’re talking about the challenges facing young men and boys - what publications like The New Yorker, Washington Post, Vox, The Economist, The New York Times, The Financial Times and more are calling a ‘crisis in masculinity’. Whether you see it as a crisis or you find the 'c' word unhelpful, there’s a sense of deepening disenfranchisement, a growing resentment towards women and girls combined with the rise of pernicious influencers, (some like Andrew Tate and Russell Brand are facing accusations of serious sexual assault and it doesn’t seem to have tempered their popularity).

And yet, across the advertising industry, publicly at least, there’s been little action in the space - and where brands or agencies do take action it appears to be a magnet for controversy. In recent years the advertising industry has been front-footed in its engagement with the struggles facing and narratives surrounding women and girls, and gender diverse people. But when it comes to men and boys, particularly cis men and boys, aside from a couple of noticeable campaigns there’s been little more than a disinterested shrug.

This disenfranchisement that seems to be growing among some boys and young men brings with it a host of social problems, particularly when it manifests as resentment, bitterness or despair. And looking at the statistics around male suicide (men make up nearly 80% of suicides in the US) and the aforementioned backslide on misogyny, the consequences can be dire.

But while this is society’s problem, is it really advertising’s problem to solve? 

Simon Gregory, joint CSO at BBH London is wary of facile and patronising brand-led responses to a problem which really is far bigger than advertising. He’s wary of it becoming yet another award jury-baiting issue du jour, and he’s also cautious about overstating just how relevant the topic is in people’s daily lives, warning there’s also a risk of jamming it into places it just doesn’t belong.

“I don’t think it’s advertising’s job to crack the debate,” says Simon. “Not through a lack of responsibility, simply because it’s bigger and more important than a well-meaning way to sell soap. The likes of ‘This Girl Can’ were much more pointed campaigns aimed to reframe topics and categories from and for a more authentic female perspective. It was a correction of previous approaches and a promotion of unheard voices. It rightly gained acclaim. Despite the likes of Gillette making most men feel a little bit shit about life, an equivalently generic ‘thumbs-up for fellas’ rally isn’t what’s needed, nor wanted.” 

However, while brands might not be able to ‘solve’ a complicated social dynamic or magically make men and boys feel optimistic and good about themselves, they might be able to help.

James Kirkham, founder of ICONIC, was heavily involved in the much-lauded ‘Like a Girl’ campaign for femcare brand Always when he was at his former agency Holler. The seeds of the campaign lay in a conversation with P&G executive Edgar Sandoval. He noted a drop in confidence across his three daughters as they reached puberty. That kicked off one of the most influential female empowerment campaigns of advertising history. Having seen first hand the impact that a project like that had on little girls, James feels a sense of duty to do the same for boys.

“‘Like A Girl’ remains a beautiful piece of work. But it was its effect which carried such weight – inspiring girls, teens, women alike by suggesting that ‘Like A Girl’ is a powerful, strong term of respect. It ended up travelling from social content on a mobile screen to the Super Bowl via Oprah and every US talk show imaginable,” he says. “Surely we owe it as makers, marketers, creators, to look to create something similar for young men?”

Moral imperative aside, there’s also a business reason for brands to really think about how they portray boys and men in their advertising. Juliet Haygarth, managing director of the Effies, says that there’s evidence that a richer and varied representation of women bestows an effectiveness boost, and suspects that we would see a similar correlation for men.

“We’ve just published a gender equality report called A Woman’s Worth, which suggests that marketers who seize the initiative and represent women and girls in a thoughtfully authentic, diverse way, not only have a positive impact on society, but also drive greater success for their brands,” she says. “If we extrapolate from that, it’s not a big leap to imagine the same applies to the way men and boys are portrayed. It’s definitely something which Effie can think about – and I hope other organisations do the same, so that together we can support every brand and marketer as they play their part in dismantling damaging stereotypes."

Indeed, Lynne Deason, head of creative excellence at Kantar, has worked on the Unstereotype Metric with the Unstereotype Alliance and says that dismantling stereotypes in representation can have a positive impact on brands, long term.

Kantar has measured over 29,000 ads, in 72 countries, for more than 5,400 brands and more than 274 categories. When it comes to positive representation, they have found that positive male portrayal results in a bump in both long-term measures like Brand Power as well as more short-term sales likelihood. They’re perceived as more meaningful but they’re also more efficient in their ability to cut through.

“What that shows is when you portray people positively in advertising, of course, that's the right thing to do in terms of society, but commercially, it's also the right thing to do,” says Lynne.

Ads with high UM score for males (landing in the top 10% of ads in the UK) include the likes of ‘The Beginner’ for John Lewis, which showed a foster dad teach himself skateboarding to try to connect with his new charge, Coca-Cola’s ‘The Letter’ and Cadbury’s ‘Secret Santa’. Lynne flags up other ads that haven’t been scored by the Unstereotype Measure but which are good examples, including Cadbury’s ‘Speakerphone’ and ‘Garage’ and Heineken’s ‘Cheers to All’.

The choices around the way men and boys are portrayed in ads matters even in campaigns that have not been created to target those audiences. Xavier Rees is CEO of Havas London and believes that even the ambient media environment can shape narratives and self-perception.

“Of course these are audiences for us but also advertising has the ability to influence society and its perceptions of young men. And whether or not you're talking to them or not, how they see a 40-, 50- or 60-year-old man portrayed in advertising is going to in some way contribute towards the overall picture they form of what it is to be a man today,” he says. “It's not something to think about in terms of us targeting them. Whether or not we target them, the advertising we make will either deliberately or accidentally help young people form images in their mind about what the world is all about.”

Speaking to experts around the industry, the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that we need to see greater diversity in terms of the men and boys portrayed and also in the expression and manifestation of masculinity.

“As an industry we’ve fallen into a quagmire of generalisations,” says Alec Tooze. “18-25 years old. Male. Gamer. Career-driven. Lazy descriptors that made us reductive, in our strategies and our creative. ‘18-25? Male? Gamer? Career-driven? Boy do we have a chocolate bar for you.’ Societal inequalities snapped us back to reality somewhat. Wider issues (rightly) forced us as an industry to take a deeper look at the realities of women, of LGBTQIA+ individuals, of different races and cultures. And great work has come out of it. Work with nuance. Work that isn’t afraid of grey areas. Work that has real humanity. But when it comes to cishet men and boys this hasn’t happened.”

For Xavier, breaking down stereotypes is key for all demographics, and crucial for avoiding thoughtless creative. “There's something we should all aspire to in advertising, which is to avoid lazy stereotypes,” he says. “So regardless of whether you're talking about young men or women or social or racial stereotypes, then advertising, if it just leans into those, can reinforce really dangerous behaviours and perceptions. But advertising – if it chooses to deliberately 'unstereotype', to use a popular word – can contribute towards people thinking again.”

And that diversity means including everyone – including men who like being masculine. David Fanner, a consultant at Ogilvy Consulting who has worked on anti-misogyny campaigns for the Mayor of London’s office, says that his research found that while there has been positive progress on portraying diverse gender identities and sexualities, there is a swathe of men who have been left behind.

“One thing that is really helpful here is just actually saying ‘that is OK, but so is this’. So it's OK to be strong. But it’s also okay to be empathetic. It's OK to be a trans man, a gay man, so on… but it's also OK just to be a bloke,” says David.

There’s diversity within individual men too. We all contain multitudes, after all. One creative we speak to reflects on being brought up by her father, a working-class single dad who imbued his daughters with practical skills and a sense of possibility. Ken Harland, is a researcher at Ulster University, who has found that there’s often a clash between public and private personas. That’s something that Kantar’s Lynne Deason has seen in her own life. She reflects on her gymnastics-loving younger son – his older brother is advising that he tone it down when he starts secondary school lest he be bullied.

“There's this need to conform to this persona of what masculinity is and what success means. But then the private persona is struggling with that and the need to do that,” says Lynne.

Simon at BBH says we need to question what we even mean by masculinity, a concept that’s slippery when you start to prod it. In some contexts, it’s manifest in the strong silent type. In other pockets of history, confident, peacockish extravagance has been the height of masculinity. And, of course, qualities that are stereotypically associated with masculinity are found in women and non-binary people too. So, it’s worthwell worth everyone from strategists and creatives to producers becoming anthropologists, philosophers, scientists and historians to tease this idea out.

“Masculinity has never been more under the spotlight than it is today, yet nobody really knows what it means. From the edges of female allyship to Andrew Tate toxicity, the word ‘masculine’ appears over four times as frequently in literature today as it did 50 years ago. However, most men are left in the grey swath of uncertainty in between. In short, it’s confusing being a man,” says Simon.

He continues, “Indeed, BBH and GWI have just worked together to interview 1,542 UK consumers on the topic to try and pin down the trappings of being a man – behaviours, qualities and attributes – and the results revealed just how broad and fluid the topic is. Whilst stereotypical qualities such as ‘strength’ and ‘machismo’ are coded as masculine traits, they are also seen as traits open to both men and women. Similarly, more stereotypically feminine traits, like ‘emotional strength’ and ‘empathy’, are becoming genderless.”

Reflecting on the ads that score well on the Unstereotype Metric, Lynne notes that the good ads tend to show men in caring roles, in a mixed-gender context and they tend to feature children. So, while they are indeed positive, Lynne cautions that brands shouldn’t fall into the trap of replacing one narrow stereotype with another. “I think we have to be a bit careful not to go down one route. And this is what being a positive man is. And actually, if we look at some of the qualitative research we've done to look at all the different types of men that there are, there's a whole load of different ranges of positive men and different ways to be a man. And so I think we need to see some of that variety coming through, and brands celebrating that.”

One campaign that’s name-checked by several of our interviewees and respondents as an example of positive, fun diversity is Axe’s ‘Find Your Magic’ from 72andSunny Amsterdam – although the most recent campaign for the brand released just last month sees the brand return to its more traditional promise of female attention, albeit with some 2023 updates around consent.

Xavier reflects that, as his agency has been working on Molson Coors, he’s noticed a marked improvement in the beer category in recent years, which has moved from portraying men as ‘comically’ inept incompetents to more worldly and varied. Another beer brand that’s performed well on the Unstereotype Measure is Heineken.

“The average bloke in a beer ad 10 years ago was not very competent at anything, only able to succeed in a group of male friends, not a very layered person, and the subject of other people's humour. You had phone lines set up to help blokes not be useless, like in one popular advertising campaign, for example. It's interesting to look at the way the beer industry advertises now, because I think it's gotten much better. We, through our relationship with Molson Coors have really tried to achieve that,” he says. “Because people today who are interested in going and having a pint are mostly going and having a pint in a group of mixed people, women and men and people of all backgrounds. So I think it's a more intelligent place now than it was. If you look at how beer brands advertise now, I think there's been huge steps taken in the way that the men are portrayed.”

Just as there is no one way to be a man, there’s more than one way to talk to men, whether to uplift, sell products, or change behaviour. From our discussions it seems there are two competing schools of thought. For some, effectiveness and authentic engagement means coming from a place of non-judgement – for others, non-judgement means letting the men who do bad things off the hook. For some, progress comes in baby steps – for others baby steps simply don’t go far enough, fast enough.

One project that’s become a flashpoint for this tension recently is the Mayor of London work aimed at tackling misogyny in boys and young men. In 2022 they launched ‘Have a Word with Yourself and Then Your Mates’, but it’s the recent ‘Say Maaate to a Mate' that’s whipped up controversy. The campaign has been created to help men who want to call out sexism among their friends or colleagues but feel they lack the tools – it suggests that a pointed ‘Maaate’ can be enough to signal disapproval in a less openly confrontational way.

When we spoke to people for this piece, we heard a range of takes on it. We heard objections that it was patronising and that its approach was too soft and didn’t go far enough in modelling a more rigorous call out. Martin Robinson is the editor and founder at media brand The Book of Man and for him the campaign doesn’t go far enough. “I just thought the idea of saying 'mate' is the weakest form of chastising someone. It just didn't feel strong enough. I can't see it working,” he says. “It's difficult for advertisers to instil new behaviour. And I think a lot of men respond quite badly to it and put the shutters up. If someone's being aggressive towards a woman in my company, I'm going to tell them to 'shut the fuck up'. It'll be more of a conversation.”

Natalie Chester, strategy director at Ogilvy, and David Fanner, a consultant and behaviour change expert at Ogilvy Consulting, work on the Mayor of London account. They say that their extensive research, which involved going into pubs, gyms and barber shops to talk to men across demographics in comfortable environments, revealed more confused and complicated dynamics at play.

They found that many men feel at a loss, find it hard to speak out both because it can be hard to go against the tide but also because they feel they will say the wrong thing. Immersing themselves in the complex hierarchies and social dynamics within male groups and environments, they saw that while confident, high status men don’t seem to care so much about the approval of others and may feel more equipped to go further, if they wish to, other men simply don’t.

They also reflect that critique largely comes from a group who feel themselves to be well versed in the arguments of feminism – but a group that’s cut off from the realities of wider society. David and Natalie say they want to meet men where they really are – rather than where they ‘ought’ to be.

“What was interesting was some of the criticism that came from super liberal men who didn't see the intervention as going far enough,” says Natalie. “And this sort of speaks to the industry bubble as well, because it's really tempting to think that we all think the same and we all violently disagree with misogyny. But the reality is, we're just not there yet, with this sort of issue. It's everywhere. It's in WhatsApp chats, it's in jokes down the pub. It's in that banter. And our tolerance to it is very individual. So our intervention was pitched very specifically at a level in accordance with how people's tolerance is towards misogyny right now.

“I think one of the key things is that with sensitive topics like misogyny, naming and shaming was not an effective strategy. Misogyny, like most anger, comes from a place of deep insecurity and so anything that we felt was kind of making men feel more isolated or more ashamed was probably unlikely to change their behaviour, but would probably perpetuate that behaviour as they get more insecure and unsure of who they are.”

David explains that this strategy is supported by the science of behaviour change. “It's very tempting with an issue like this when people are doing bad things, to really pounce on them and say, you're doing a bad thing. You're bad. But in psychology, there’s something called  psychological reactance, which is that feeling of basically being told off. No one wants that, it is totally counterproductive. And so that was central to all of this.”

The campaign is a live experiment and whether the naysayers or the team behind the campaign are correct will come out in the data. It’s still early days but Natalie says early numbers are looking good. 

Another challenge facing the advertising industry is the need to have really hard conversations about messy topics. To an extent adland seems to be caught in a double bind. Show empathy towards the struggles of lonely and disenfranchised young men and you risk being accused of undermining the very real challenges faced by women and girls, at the hands of violent and misogynistic men. There seems to be a tension between being effective and being correct.

Take the loneliness and uncertainty of men and teenagers in terms of dating, romance and sex. That’s manifested in the rise of the incel – ‘involuntary celibate’ men, simmering in bitterness and resentment towards women. This is more than an online meme, at its very worst, it has given rise to violence against women, including fatal shootings.

Researchers in Norway have highlighted that on online incel fora, the rising misogyny is intertwined with a sense of oppression and victimhood. With more women attending and completing university than men, and with increasing female progress in the workplace, women and feminism are becoming convenient, if misplaced, scapegoats for resentful men struggling to make progress in their own lives, whether personal or professional. Indeed, a 2022 study carried out by the University of Gothenburg researchers found a disheartening association between age and opposition to women’s rights. The group that had the highest opposition to women’s rights was young men.

“We've seen a regression, particularly amongst attitudes of young men towards gender equality,” says Kantar’s Lynne Deason. “And I think this syncs with the idea that progression for women means fewer opportunities for young men, for men generally. And then there's the connection between that regression in attitudes and the increase in domestic abuse.”

It should, one hopes, be possible to condemn violent acts, abuse and prejudicial attitudes while having empathy for those who are not violent, but are lost and lonely. But is the marketing industry ready for this nuance? The conversation around dating and relationships has become a minefield, for example. With dating apps overwhelmingly populated by men, heterosexual men in particular can feel that the online search for love is stacked against them while in-person approaches seem out of bounds for men who are not confident in their ability to read social cues, especially in the post Me Too age.

“Many young men right now are lonely and uncertain; their place in the world in doubt,” says James Kirkham, who’s been thinking about what these combined dynamics mean for young men, especially those who don’t fulfil somewhat arbitrary criteria on dating apps. “Approaching a potential mate in the workplace might seem almost impossible now, through fear of an HR conversation – whereas it was previously cited as the number one location where future marriages originated. Hidden behind screens and conversing only through messages feels like a road to toxicity. Certainly online apps are a problem as much as they are a convenience.”

Lori Meakin is a former WACL exec member and founder and CEO of The Others & Me – and she is also the author of a book called ‘No More Menemies’, in which she explores how to create a more equal world between the sexes without demonising men. From her perspective, the only way to make progress is to understand the situation as it is, not as we wish it to be.

“We have to recognise the resentment and sense of loss that millions of men – particularly gen-z men – feel right now, even if we know how much of that is misplaced,” she says.

That requires a degree of empathy and compassion. While researching their Mayor of London campaigns, Natalie and David sum up the crisis in one word: uncertainty. Men and boys are uncertain of their role in the world, uncertain about when to step up and when to hold back, and caught up in the fear that whatever they say or do, it will inevitably turn out to be the wrong thing.

Xavier Rees sees these anxieties and uncertainties too, particularly around showing emotion and mental health, where men and boys continue to receive mixed messages. Both agencies and clients alike need to think of young men and boys as three dimensional humans and better engage with their struggles. “Still the biggest problem is that young men are riven, as they always have been, with anxiety and questions about who they are and trying to work out how to navigate life. Society has always said men are weak if they show frailty or vulnerability or too much emotion. In the last 10 years, I've had a client reject a campaign because it had a boy in it crying, and the male client said 'boys don't cry' and believed it.”

It becomes even harder to have those difficult conversations when you have a culture war raging all around. Polarisation and outrage seems to be the mode du jour.

Jane Austin, founder of Persuasion, is a PR expert who understands more than most just how even seemingly innocuous messages can be ripped apart by tribalistic commentators in both social media and in traditional media.

“There’s also the problem that with the current culture wars raging about ‘woke’, any attempt to try and nip toxic masculinity in the bud from a young age faces meeting with confected social media outrage,” she reflects. “Just look at the furore over Gillette’s ‘Believe’ ad that addressed toxic masculinity, depicting bullying, sexual harassment, sexism and aggressive male behaviour, then showing men stepping in to call it out or stop it – that was slammed online as “feminist propaganda”. That was more than four years ago, and you could argue the culture wars have become even worse since. Even a recent sweet John Lewis ad featuring a boy larking around wearing a dress and make up caused certain sorts to have online aneurysms.”

The Gillette ad, 'We Believe: The Best a Man Can Be', was a 2019 Super Bowl ad created by Grey New York. The furore and controversy both in the industry and out in the real world was deafening. In the industry, some felt raising the topic of how men can step up, particularly against misogyny, was a strategic miss, talking down to their audience and hijacking an important issue, but there were still others who saw it as a welcome risk. Out in the social media space, though, the ad simply became fodder for the 'woke' versus 'anti-woke' rage machine.

The challenges facing boys and young men today are a little different from those that faced women and girls a decade ago, at the height of the female empowerment train. ‘Like a Girl’, ‘This Girl Can’ and ‘Fearless Girl’ were rallying cries of optimism and hope. The starting point was the idea that girls are full of potential and it was the systems of culture and society that was keeping them back. The idea that their true selves were beautiful, strong, powerful.

Much of the purpose-driven work created for men and boys starts from a very different place. Whether it’s campaigns about male suicide or male violence against women, the framing is that it’s not the system that’s at fault. It’s that men are the problem. 

With such a negative starting point, is it any wonder that there’s a sense of despondence? Martin Robinson at The Book of Man thinks that this lack of hope is key to understanding the difficulties facing boys and men today.

“Maleness is often seen now, if you're not careful, as a problem,” says Martin. “It's like original sin. If you're a man, you're going to be caught up in all these things, you're much more likely go to jail, much more likely to die from suicide. Those kinds of statistics are right, but if it's turned in the wrong direction it leads to alternatives coming up. Because these boys are feeling hopeless. Rather than being shown the positive ways to be a man, to embrace being a man and look at positive examples, they're being led off down into these dark, destructive areas, where you do have Andrew Tate openly saying to young men, 'Come to me. I'm the one that you've been looking for. I've got all the answers. Here's a model that you can follow. And this is what a man should be.’”

Optimism and aspiration are important levers. Hopelessness demotivates and makes change even harder. Optimism offers incentive to change one’s behaviour and outlook. From a behavioural change and perspective, understanding these levers is crucial, says Lynne Deason. "There needs to be an incentive to change, right? And what you're doing in saying, 'you're the problem' is that you're creating friction. For some people that works, because they might reflect, 'Oh, yes, I can see, actually, I do need to do things differently'. So I'm not saying it won't have any effects. But you do need to think about it from a behavioural lens in terms of how do you bring about positive change, just as you would do in the same way of thinking about how do you encourage people to make more sustainable choices? It is the same kind of thing, you've got to make sure there are fuels for them to do it."

Another big difference between the early 2010s, when girl power reigned supreme in adland, and today, is technology. All-powerful algorithms on platforms like TikTok have created not a slipstream but a vortex that can suck us down weird and even terrifying wormholes.

That’s certainly the case that we’ve seen with the popularity of sinister male-centric influencers like Andrew Tate. A boy looking for guidance online can find sensible advice about exercise and self-discipline as helpful tools to navigate the world and soon be fed more destructive messaging. At the extreme end, Andrew Tate, who was arrested in Romania with rape and human trafficking charges, provides dangerous but seemingly easy answers to sexually frustrated teenagers and men. That in turn makes it harder to form real, human connections and relationships and risks encouraging more violent behaviours. Some boys have become emboldened to demean female teachers and classmates, with a brazen openness.

And while Tate has become this flashpoint for the issue, Xavier Rees suggests that there’s something deeper going on.

“Andrew Tate is just a symptom. He's perpetuating something, but he's a symptom of a much bigger situation in society – the polarisation of society that is happening for all sorts of reasons,” he says. “It’s in no small part because social media drives polarisation because it enables people to only hang out in conversations that they want to hang out in. You can spend a lot of your life surrounding yourself with only one point of view these days. That used to be quite difficult.”

Can an industry of creative thinkers and insightful strategists defeat the algorithm and create an alternative that’s more appealing than the Black Pill manosphere? 

Lori Meakin proposes that the industry needs to really study the likes of Tate to understand why he holds such influence if we are to create that alternative. “We can learn from the way Tate and the heroes of the manosphere understand how it feels to be a man today… but then create a very different answer,” she says.

Right now, advertisers and brands might find they make more headway, more quickly if they can figure out how the system works so they can hack it. David Fanner recalls that the previous Mayor of London campaign ‘Have a Word with Yourself Then Your Mates’ earned three billion impressions and generated thousands of social media comments, in part by pulling those same levers that the influencers do. 

“My perspective is, I'm really interested in systems thinking. I keep asking the question, are you better trying to burn down a system or work with the incentives of it. It really comes down to the perspective that most of the time the way to create the most change and effectiveness is to work with the system and not against it,” he says. “The system at the moment is based on what gets the most views? What gets the most engagement? Those personalities are selling something that men are buying. We need to understand that and we need to change that input, because we have the power to do that, essentially.

“We have the same tools at our disposal to work within the system, and actually be a better voice, a more hygienic voice than the one that's covered in dirt and is salacious.”

The ultimate hack, of course, is to encourage people to put down their phones or step away from their games consoles for more than five minutes. So much of this angst is driven by the way we live and communicate in an online world – face-to-face interactions play out much differently. And so James Kirkham speculates that some sort of solution may be found out there in the real world.

“We as a species rely on smell, humour, body language – multiple senses beyond those provided by dating apps, yet these are rendered useless and impotent in a world spent on Tinder or Hinge,” he says. Maybe there’s an opportunity there for creative thinkers working for brands to help boys find real-life connections. “How can we help to create a healthy masculinity? How can we create ways to facilitate positive conversation? The coffee line chat for a young man; how can this be normalised and made not seedy but healthy and fun? Can we encourage opportunities to establish relationships, contacts, friendships, introductions… After all, it’s this type of interaction which is needed in order for a whole species to evolve.”

It’s certainly something that Martin Robinson has found with his in-person events for The Book of Man. “Getting people in the same space together makes such a difference,” he says. “You can actually have a conversation about these tricky things, rather than it turning into a slanging match.”

There’s a lot of work ahead, and the topic may seem riven with tension, risk and a lack of clarity. But throughout our conversations with people across the industry a few, relatively simple, starting points and rules of thumb emerge.

There’s the aforementioned diversity in place of generalisations, for one thing. There’s committing to ditching the hoary old ‘useless men’ stereotype beloved by brands for decades. There’s understanding that telling men off and starting from a place of negativity and criticism is rarely effective. 

Going forward, it would, suggests Natalie Chester at Ogilvy, behove people working in advertising to do a bit of homework to gain clarity over the issue and concepts at play. Maleness and masculinity are not the same thing, and there’s an assumption that ‘masculinity’ is ‘toxic masculinity’.

“Masculinity has kind of become an almost dirty word. Over the last few decades, we've heard about toxic masculinity, somehow, masculinity has become intertwined with patriarchy and misogyny. We think of masculinity as something toxic. But that toxicity is coming from other issues; masculinity is not the same as patriarchy. And whenever I think you have conversations about diversity and inclusion, it's quite often this sort of mass mainstream that get forgotten, your regular guys for whom being masculine still holds appeal. But now, there's a certain shame attached to it, and other men have distanced themselves from it or rebelled against it. So part of that is reclaiming, broadening our appreciation of what masculinity means and moving away from lazy stereotypes.”

It’s also worth taking the time to seek out and celebrate the people who are already changing the media landscape for the better and learning from them, whether they’re in advertising or not. Platforms like The Book of Man, charities like Movember or The Man Cave in Australia. Just last week football club Norwich City created their own short film to encourage men to look out for their friends and to be aware of signs of suicidality. 

Now, says James Kirkham, is the time to build on that and to offer more optimistic, aspirational alternatives. “The groundwork has already been set through some incredible work – the likes of Movember, with mental health and male suicide something that is now spoken about at greater length, depth and regularity; without stigma. But beyond this, it feels like we can do more to shine a light on a more positive, progressive and aspirational phase of the public discourse around masculinity.”

 

Throughout our research, many of the people we spoke to were parents of young boys themselves, so the topic is one that worries them personally even more than it does professionally. Just as parents rightly worry about the impact of social media on their daughters’ confidence and happiness, they worry about what it will do for their sons’ confidence and happiness. 

It is a struggle to empathise with those adults whose despair has led them to a place of violence and bitterness – and with good reason. But if we flip this around, and think of the vulnerable children starting to interact with the wider world, and struggling to navigate a complex and uncertain world where they feel they have no role, or where they find that they have been demonised, the brief opens up a bit.

Indeed, perhaps the very first thing that the industry needs to do is to reframe the brief completely, from viewing boys and men as a problem to be solved to a chance to do something positive for a misunderstood audience.

“Rather than seeing it as a responsibility, which feels very overbearing, I always prefer to see it as an opportunity. We're lucky,” says Xavier Rees. “This is a real privilege to work in essentially because we have the ability to make an ad about becoming a teacher for a career or about the story of a different beer. But in making the ad you have the opportunity to achieve so much more. There's an opportunity there, if we play it right. How advertising portrays men definitely will contribute in some way to the whole conversation around what is it to be a man today? Because there's just too much advertising, seen by too many people for that not to be the case.”

With International Men’s Day just over a month away (November 19th), the time is ripe for the industry to dig deep on what's happening in the lives of young men and boys and to think about how to engage with them.