Why Financial Services Firms Are Displaying More Women in Ads

[Corey Dutton]

According to a recent blog post by Karen Firestone on Harvard Business Review Blogs, financial services companies are using more images of women in their advertisements, 20% more than just 5 years ago. This as reported by Getty Images. Although this next part is uncited, there’s a ton of search engine analytic data which indicates that website visitors are more likely to click on an ad showing a photo of a woman, versus a photo of a man. (This is likely a large contributing factor to the results reported from Getty).

The images of women have long been used in advertisements as a way to reel in buyers, or even seduce them into buying. And with the financial services industry taking much of the blame for the economic meltdown of 2008, financial services companies have had a tremendous need to gain the trust of the consumer again. Because images of women are commonly associated with trust, kindness, and compassion, to me it’s really not surprising that these companies are utilizing more photos of women in their ads. Read the rest of the blog on this topic at HBR.org here and leave your comments directly below: http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/why-the-financial-services-industry-is-showing-more-women-in-its-ads/

What is your opinion? Do you agree or disagree that the association of women with a feeling of trust is a one reason that financial services companies have started using images of women in their advertisements? You may not really care but I liked this blog post on HBR.org and wanted to share. Thanks for reading.

Posted by Corey Curwick Dutton