Sandberg: Get real on ads

FACEBOOK chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has called for advertising that more ­accurately reflects diversity.

Sheryl Sandberg at a Facebook event in Cannes

FACEBOOK chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, founder of women’s movement Lean In, has called for advertising that more ­accurately reflects the diversity of how women look.

Speaking to The Australian in Cannes, Ms Sandberg said messages in ads could make women around the world feel inadequate.

She also said young women had benefited from social media because it had allowed them to take control of their self-image.

“Messages can make us think we’re not thin enough, and our hair’s not good enough and we’re not this enough and not that enough,’’ she said at the Facebook villa. “All too often messages don’t embrace who we are.

“I’m a big believer in an individual’s voice giving us power. It gives us power to describe who we are. It gives us power to be unique ­individuals ... women are very ­active on social media. All too often messages don’t embrace who we are.”

Ms Sandberg praised the Unilever campaign for Dove for using real women without digital retouching, as well as using models from diverse backgrounds.

Ms Sandberg said she was “grateful” for the furore her book had created across the world.

Speaking to The Australian at an exclusive roundtable event at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Ms Sandberg said: “Anytime you try to change something there’s going to be ­resistance.”

In response to some criticism that Ms Sandberg’s message had limited relevance to the lives of most working women, she said: “People are very vested in the status quo and if you try to change the status quo there are going to be critical voices and it is in that debate that change happens. And so we have to debate.”

Ms Sandberg is the first and only woman to sit on the board of Facebook. She has held senior positions at Google, the US Treasury and the World Bank.

In her book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Succeed, Ms Sandberg argues women lack confidence, don’t speak up enough, and refuse to sit at male-dominated boardroom tables.

“Less than 6 per cent of the CEO jobs in any country, including the US, are women. We have a leadership problem.”

But critics have said the billionaire Harvard graduate’s message about having it all is unrealistic, and Ms Sandberg is too wealthy to offer advice to ordinary people.

She was joined on the round table by Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, the biggest women’s magazine in the world and the best-selling monthly magazine in the US.

At a time when magazines are challenged by audience fragmentation in a digital world awash with blogs and free content, Ms Coles has driven a successful paid digital strategy, with Cosmopolitan’s app the third most popular in the US Apple Store.