Addressing financial gender (in)equality with advertisements - A no or a go? : A qualitative study on how the commercial bank DNB's use of femvertising influences female consumers and their image of the brand

Abstract: Whilst gender equality has moved forward in recent years in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden, there are still significant financial gaps between the genders. According to several scholars, women tend to invest less than men, which leads to consequences such as women having less financial capital wealth and lower pensions. The perception of investing and the banking and financial industry are still perceived as male-dominated by society. Linked to societal perceptions, advertisements have been discussed to influence consumers' perceptions of norms and stereotypes in society. Femvertising is a recently emerged advertising concept that empowers women and challenges concurrent norms and stereotypes about the female gender in society. Furthermore, organizations taking a stance for a social cause through advertisements has become a trend in recent years, where brand activism has been encountered in the context. However, taking a stance for a social issue can be a risky action from a brand, as corporations jeopardize harming their brand image if consumers do not appreciate the message they are trying to communicate.  The academic research on femvertising in the context of male-dominated industries has been surprisingly scarce, where previous scholars suggest further studies in this context is needed. Little to no research has investigated the usage of femvertising in advertisements for the banking industry, nor its influence on female consumers and their image of the brand. This study’s purpose is to investigate how the commercial bank DNB's use of femvertising influences female consumers and their image of the brand. We aim to fill the discovered research gap through studying a Norwegian bank that tries to empower women and take a stand in their advertisements for financial gender equality. For that reason, semi-structured interviews were conducted with one manager from the Norwegian bank DNB and nine female consumers with a solid connection to Norway. The manager from DNB was chosen for his expertise and knowledge of the bank’s campaign #huninvesterer. The other respondents were purposely sampled based on their female gender and strong connection to Norway, as we wanted respondents who already knew of DNB from before the interviews.  The thematic analysis presented several similarities between the female respondents' perception of DNB’s brand image and the manager’s description of the bank’s desired brand identity. The use of femvertising was mostly perceived as something positive and inspiring due to its empowering elements and challenging of female stereotypes, presenting a diversity of women, but had downsides of being too female focused, where several female respondents expressed certain skepticism to the campaign’s exclusive focus on women. In common for all respondents was how they perceived the bank’s stand on the socio-political issue as eligible for a large bank. The overall opinion of the influential effect on the bank’s brand image was suggested to be strengthened, although the results varied to a certain extent.  The study provides requested empirical data and better knowledge and understanding of femvertising used in a male-dominated industry. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to nuance the results as the perspectives of males and a more diverse age span among females could enrich the findings of this thesis.