New ad campaign shows ‘power like you’ve never seen’ before

It’s time to kill off outdated images of ‘power’ such as bare-chested men riding horses and suit-clad alphas around board tables. There’s a power like you’ve never seen before and it’s here to stay.

Women are significantly under-represented across all levels of government, but a new ad campaign from Women for Election is hoping to shift perceptions and spark urgent reform.

Ahead of the imminent federal election, Australia needs more women to stand for office and to do this people need to get comfortable with what power truly looks like.

Working with ad agency BMF and supported by UN Women Australia, the Power Like You’ve Never Seen ad campaign urges people to rethink the face of power, challenge past outdated representations and embrace a new vision of power in Australia.

The insight is that in order to have a new vision of power, people need to see and be reminded of what this looks like.

The campaign features bold, bright and striking out-of-home and print ads alongside a TV ad that urges people to forget outdated stereotypes of power poses, power suits and mahogany desks. The ad soon flicks to more realistic and reflective images of power, from a pregnant woman in work attire to a woman in a firefighter uniform and another in a magistrates robe.

New power: A still from the TV ad via ad agency BMF

Women for Election CEO Licia Heath said while the campaign was intended to speak directly to all women of Australia – be they regional, rural, women of colour, older, younger, stay-at-home mums, professional women – everyone – it also wanted to resonate with men who want to see more women in politics.

“We want this campaign to inspire people to question, and in fact rethink, how they view power and whether that view might be outdated,” Ms Heath said.

“When we think of power our mind automatically drifts to people who look a lot like the male politicians of the past. This campaign quite simply asks you to consider a new concept of power – one which has more female faces.”

Out with the old. Women for Election urges Australians to rethink the face of power, via ad agency BMF

Women for Election wants everyone to be open to the benefits that a new, more contemporary type of power will bring to the betterment of society as a whole.

Ms Heath said it was also essential the ad didn’t alienate 50 per cent of Australians in the process, so a sense of humour had to play an important role in the ad.

She explained how the creative approach was “critical” in the campaign as it sought to create new images of power and communicate those less traditional political leadership skills, such as empathy, honesty and emotional intelligence.

“Think how easy it is to find imagery of ‘old’ power: men standing in front of saluting armies, leading a conversation at the head of a table surrounded by other men … Occasionally even riding horses bare chested, waving at the cameras. It all visually communicates ideas of traditional masculinity, influence, control,” she said. “Communicating those skills quickly and visually is hard, but BMF’s creative team captured it beautifully.”

A still from the TV ad that urges people to forget outdated stereotypes of power poses, power suits and mahogany desks.

Creating the campaign has not come without speed bumps, with Ms Heath saying that everyone who has worked on the campaign has been challenged, particularly in how they view power.

“Many of us had outdated ideas, or internalised patriarchal views of power,” she said.

“Many were hesitant early on about the magnitude of taking on this big, complex concept of power as the central tenet of the campaign.

“But watching everyone evolve from ‘Is it right to tackle massive power structures in a campaign like this?’ to ‘Yes, and I want to be a part of that power’, was truly inspiring.”

Women for Election says it’s time rethink the face of power

Pia Chaudhuri, executive creative director at BMF, who also has a cameo in the ad herself, said a serious tone for the campaign had not felt right as it wanted to celebrate what made these women feel empowered and that the bold colours, language, and use of humour were about showing up in a different way to traditional portrayals of power.

The campaign spans over many months and has numerous iterations. While the short-term focus is on capturing the Australian population at a time when they are more politically engaged due to the federal election year, Ms Heath said there was a longer-term goal to achieve gender equity in Australia within the next 10 years.

As UN Women Australia powerfully highlighted in 2021 through the When Will She Be Right? campaign, gender equality is 100 years away in Australia.

Ms Chaudhuri said this number had actually increased to 134 years due to the pandemic, which meant no one today would ever see, let alone benefit from, a gender equal society.

“The reason most women don’t see themselves in positions of power is simply because, for centuries now, power has been branded as male,” Ms Chaudhuri said.

Out of home advert from the Power Like You’ve Never Seen campaign

It’s a huge ambition, but that’s why Power Like You’ve Never Seen is just the start of a decade-long campaign that will only finish when gender equality is achieved.

“Ultimately, we want both the platform and concept of Power Like You’ve Never Seen to become totally redundant in the not-so-distant future,” Ms Chaudhuri said.

Alongside the ad campaign, Women for Election, which provides practical support for women seeking to enter politics, has launched a dedicated powerlikeyouveneverseen.org website.