Where the Boys Are

Narrative by Whitney Dunlap-Fowler, Posted October 15, 2024

Image courtesy of the author

The CASE FILE series — to which SEMIOVOX has invited our semiotician colleagues from around the world to contribute — shares memorable case studies via story telling.

In 2017, a major American television network sought to better understand the emerging portrayals of men and masculinity in which male viewers were most interested; my agency was hired to conduct a semiotic analysis of the topic. The client planned to use the insights from our analysis to “ideate fresh content” where such portrayals could exist more freely. Not only did they hope to attract more male viewers, but the network wanted to become a thought-leader on male-driven content in order to help their advertisers connect with the men of today and tomorrow.

Although the gender identity revolution had begun long before, the Women’s March of January 2017 seemed like a historical turning point. The march made societal shifts in gendered expectations impossible to ignore; and although women’s needs were the focus of that particular event, one unexpected consequence was the opening of new opportunities for men to begin interrogating their own gender identities and for brands to reevaluate how to connect with these self-reflective men. It was this discourse around masculinity that had prompted the client to seek semiotic insights.

To find answers, we began with a cultural context analysis on the state of gender, and highlighted how specific cultural events had each led to traditional notions of manhood being challenged and replaced with more modern expressions of maleness. We then paired those learnings with a semiotic deep dive into portrayals of manhood in advertising and examined more than 500 ads featuring men.

What did we discover? While advertisers had been nimbly keeping up with shifting gender norms for women, increasingly featuring them in leading roles or traditionally masculine positions, the same had not been true for men. Because fragility and weakness are associated with anything that is not perceived to be 100% masculine, men have had less opportunity to see expanded versions of themselves in media… which has led to portrayals that are limited and often rooted in restrictive tropes denying them the ability to exist in a wider variety of contexts and emotions.

After mapping a comprehensive landscape of manhood in advertising, we moved into consumer research to better understand the types of male portrayals and storylines men preferred to see. What emerged clearly from the research was an appetite for fresher portrayals of manhood. Men desired the opportunity to be featured in ways that were more human, capable, loving, and kind. I was surprised at how vehemently men objected to being depicted as the tropes that saturated the landscape most often- mansplainers, clueless idiots, and obnoxious jocks. They were hungry for dimensionality and diversity in the ways they were being portrayed and wanted more opportunities to be shown in more sentimental, family-involved, and reliable ways.

I’m glad to have played a small role in using semiotics and cultural insights to positively impact and make space for more diverse definitions of manhood. This work was done more than seven years ago, but today masculinity remains a hotly debated topic, especially in America where different ethnic and cultural factors have a role in determining what manhood should look like. Despite this, the evidence from our work was clear: Marketers must meet men where they are, and that continues to change and shift with each new generation.

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Whitney Dunlap-Fowler is a seasoned semiotician and brand strategist specializing in helping clients build culturally intelligent brands. With more than 12 years of brand building expertise, she equips clients with the cultural strategy and foresight tools needed to insure their insights today will positively impact their bottom line beyond tomorrow. Before becoming an independent strategist (Touch of Whit Creative), Whitney held roles at Kantar Added Value and Kelton Global and obtained her Masters in Media Culture and Communications at NYU. Today, she continues to work with clients across a wide variety of categories including Sephora, Meta, Target, ESPN, Oribe and more while overseeing Insights in Color, a diversity initiative for multicultural market research and insights professionals rooted in disruption, which she founded in 2020.

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Where the Boys Are