There are numerous companies doing marketing campaigns for International Women’s Day to get consumers’ attention and raise awareness of their brands by doing some good and Netflix is one of them. Netflix and UN Women have collaborated and launched a special collection of Netflix series, films and documentaries, which was called Because She Watched, on International Women’s Day 2020. This campaign was curated by female creators who work both offscreen and onscreen and this partnership was to support the 25th anniversary of the Generation Equality campaign.
Apart from providing the special collection, Netflix also had other follow-ups for the campaign. During the campaign period, Netflix members can choose profile icons from the selection of Because She Watched to celebrate their favourite female characters. To further celebrate these inspiring stories, Netflix invited 11 female content executives to talk about their stories of careers in the entertainment industry.
(image courtesy: YouTube)
The idea of this campaign was to tell women’s own stories and show their diversities, by making the invisible visible. Through the Because She Watched campaign, Netflix tried to reach out to more women and convey an encouraging message that they are empowered to tell their stories. Especially when first seeing the promo, I, as a female audience, felt touched and passionate that I was capable of doing anything I wanted just as the characters did, which reminds me of an argument proposed by Carah and Louw. Carah and Louw pointed out that media industries have a vital influence on providing a landscape for people of seeing the world and offering symbolic resources which people can use to craft their identities.
“TV and film have the power to reflect and shape popular culture, which is why we believe it’s so important that more people see their lives reflected in storytelling.”
— Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative
By celebrating International Women’s Day, Netflix seemed to care about women’s rights. However, we should be aware that to some extent, this International Women’s Day campaign can be seen as a commercial move rather than contributing to women’s rights or benefits. This is because the Because She Watched campaign simplified the dilemmas and difficulties that women might come across in daily life. The promo keeps telling the audience that because ‘she’ watched one story and identified with one character, ‘she’ got the power, which is not true. When watching the promo, the audience might neglect this unintentional but inappropriate message.
It is noteworthy that according to a Netflix user demographics of 2019, Netflix had 57% per cent of the female audience, which means the female audience was a vital target group for it. In this campaign, Netflix used those passionate storylines to catch its audience’s eyes, especially female audience’s. It emphasised stories and characters, connecting the media products that Netflix sells to its target group – women. This reminds me of Banet-Weiser’s concept of popular feminism, which refers to a situation where the expression of feminism becomes a popular symbol and topic that popular and commercial media talks about and popular feminism is accessible and admired by people. By following this popular feminist trend, it is easy for Netflix to be favoured by the mass and establish a decent image. As a consequence, Netflix successfully attracted more potential audiences as well as maintained its current audience.
The visibility of popular feminism… is important, but it often stops there, as if seeing or purchasing feminism is the same thing as changing patriarchal structures.
Sarah Banet-Weiser, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny
Netflix did a favourable attempt to promote women’s rights by presenting women’s stories in this International Women’s Day campaign. However, it still stayed at a superficial level when talking about the issue of gender inequality. Its attempt was merely ‘translating women’s discourse into stylised commodity signs’, as how Goldman, Health and Smith described commodity feminism. Under this circumstance, it is hard to say this International Women’s Day campaign is really for women.