e.l.f.’s audience may be adults, but agency, Oberland, knows that dick humour is going to attract attention nonetheless. And the beauty brand has a message that should get attention. There are more men named Dick on public company boards in the US than there are women or diverse groups.
There are two times more men named Dick than Hispanic women. There are nineteen times more men named Dick than women of Middle Eastern descent. Black women and Asian women barely outnumber men named Dick. And there are only 3 Native American women serving on these boards.
“We’re out to change all that because boards with more gender diversity are 27% more likely to outperform less gender diverse boards. And boards with more people of colour are 13% more likely to outperform less diverse boards,” the company stated.
e.l.f.’s So Many Dicks attention-grabbing OOH billboards are running through June 10 in New York’s Financial District, that is densely populated by companies with men-heavy boards.
The campaign is built on research by e.l.f. on the race and gender makeup of corporate boards in the US, covering 36,957 existing board members and 4,429 publicly traded companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. There were 566 men named Richard, Rick or Dick serving on those boards. Hispanic women numbered 283, only one-half the number of Dicks. There were 806 Black women and 774 Asian women on boards.
These ads are part of e.l.f.’s Change the Board Game initiative, that aims to help double the rate of women and diverse members added to corporate boards by 2027.
The push began with a video in which tennis legend, Billie Jean King, hits tennis balls into a board meeting. Each ball contains facts, such as that women make up only 27% of U.S. corporate boards and that the average corporate board is 88% white.
The beauty brand also partnered with the National Association of Corporate Directors as a sponsor of its NACD Accelerate program, which creates a pathway to board service for diverse and female candidates.
e.l.f. is walking the walk itself. Of 4,200 publicly traded US companies, e.l.f. is only 1 of 4 to have a board that is two-thirds women and one-third diverse.
