Fake feminism fails: what the Novig ad teaches brands

Until very recently, many Indians would have assumed Novig was a Scandinavian pharma company. A campaign called Just Sports changed that—for all the wrong reasons.

In the ad for the sports prediction brand, actor Sydney Sweeney appears in sports gear that leaves little to the imagination and repeats the same two words: “just sports.” The reaction from women athletes has been swift and angry. The Female Athlete Project said, “It’s incredible how they could have fitted in so much misogyny into 40 seconds.” Athletes also flooded social media with their own training and sweating photos, pointing out what women in sport actually look like.

When empowerment language meets an objectifying lens

This is not an isolated Hollywood moment. Sweeney was caught in an American Eagle controversy last year. In India, GIVA’s recent Rakhi ad featuring Kriti Sanon drew backlash for styling that many found jarringly out of place. Sanon, who is also an investor in the jewellery brand, responded by asking when people would stop telling women what to wear—using women’s rights language to deflect a commercial critique. Earlier this summer, Janhvi Kapoor’s role in Peddi was criticised for hyper-sexualisation, and the director eventually edited parts of the film.

Ratna Pathak Shah made a related point at a 2017 actors’ roundtable, arguing that privileged actors should refuse roles that reduce them to objects of lust; Silk Smitha, she noted, did not have that option. The common thread is privilege: those who benefit financially can often retreat from the fallout.

Why audiences spot the gap

From a marketing psychology view, this is an authenticity gap. A brand borrows the language of empowerment while its creative still depends on the male gaze. Audiences experience that as a contradiction, and contradictions trigger psychological reactance—people feel manipulated, so they push back harder than they would against an openly old-fashioned ad.

The Guardian’s Elle Hunt put it bluntly: brands “don’t care about representation, they care about making money.” Whether or not that is fully true, the perception is what matters. Once consumers suspect the cause is a costume, the brand loses the trust it was trying to buy.

A sharper playbook

• Ask whether the creative treats women as the subject of the story or as decoration for it.
• Do not invoke a social movement unless the brand’s everyday behaviour supports it—including how spokespeople respond post-launch.
• Test the ad with the community you claim to represent before it ships, not after the backlash.
• If the celebrity is also an investor, assume consumers will connect that dot and factor it into your communications plan.

The test that matters

A simple pre-launch check is the say-do gap: line up what the campaign says against what the organisation and its partners actually do. If the gap is wide, no amount of empowerment copy will close it. If it is narrow, the message lands. Shock may buy impressions; only consistency buys permission to keep showing up.

Source: ETBrandEquity.com