How Diageo corrects gender assumptions

When brands depict society, it is important that they think about who is doing the watching and who controls the action – an example from Diageo shows how to do this.

Business has a strange relationship to academic theory. Its processes can be similarly knotty, its language interminably complex. The marketing division, in particular, has a tendency to reach for an intuitive digging experience product, when it means a spade. But when it comes to thinking about how to depict and represent gender, progressive theory seems to have made its way into marketing with clarity and force.

In 1975, the academic Laura Mulvey published what would go on to be a fundamental text in feminist visual theory: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In the essay, Mulvey fleshes out...

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