How does a healthcare brand gain the trust of women who feel that the system is failing them? Crowd DNA’s Sundari Sheldon decodes what happens when you put women at the center of it…

As ‘Femtech’ and the female wellness market is booming, it’s helping to expose the failings in how healthcare has been delivered to women. It’s often a fragmented system, where women’s body parts are treated by different doctors, ignoring that gynecology, mental health and wellness are part of ‘whole’ health. Further, gender concepts are complex, and of course, no two journeys are the same. 

Taking an intersectional approach to individualized personal care for women is a necessity to land well with the consumers of today.

As part of our regular cultural decode series, Semiotics At Crowd, we’re looking at tia and how this company is leading in the representation of women’s wellness. Tia – from the Spanish for ‘aunt’ – is a US wellness hub that integrates gynecology, primary care, and mental wellbeing: a holistic service from puberty to menopause (and the majority of its offerings are covered by most insurance plans).

The brand is focused on intersectional wellness as “the modern medical home for women”. And it utilizes a unique brand strategy to reflect how it’s open to the complexities of women’s experience. Below, we’ve used tia to explore three new key codes of ‘modern medical’ wellness that are shining through in women’s health. 

1. Wellness as individualized personal care 

Faceless, unidentifiable illustrations throughout tia’s online presence are a focus on ‘you’. Literally, as a design concept, with faceless drawings, you become the focal point. In contrast to the unrelatable use of perfectly placed models with often cheesy expressions, by using anonymous illustrations it enables onlookers to fit themselves into tia’s wellness approach.

Tia’s focus on the individual also comes through visually with components like illustrations of tia’s services circling around around the word “you”, and consistent language that highlights their mission of putting the individual needs of each consumer first, for example “Your health is an open conversation. Our providers decide what’s safe. You decide what’s best.”

2. Wellness as true, genuine representation 

Tia’s use of a muted palette speaks to diversity, and the pops of color highlight their vibrant – some could claim revolutionary – message. The team bios and photos are posted in black and white with pops of color in the background. Elsewhere only parts of illustrations are colorful as a contrast to the mostly beige background of their website pages and clinic interior designs. Where there is a colorful background, a beige font is used. Additionally, tia signals diverse body shapes by using softer shapes for their illustrations of women. The message is that tia wants true, genuine representation with their approach to health. 

3. Wellness as an intersectional offering

Intersectionality is a crucial lens through which to view wellness today. Tia reflects that by acknowledging that there must be fluidity in treating the various wellness needs of their patients. The use of messy brush strokes (in contrast to fine lines) represents that things are more fluid now – especially in regard to gender expression.

Their non-aggressive and smooth lines serve as a representation of the fluidity offered by their individualized care. Additionally, their signature pink dot is a testament to not only their friendly font and color choice, but it’s about their inclusive and well ’rounded’ approach to healthcare.

Overall, tia is redefining what women’s wellness means in modern times – the semiotic codes connect it to individualized personal care, diversity, and intersectionality. The company is drawing a line in the sand from traditional approaches to health and wellness, and redefining what the future will look like: on one level, the gynecologist for the self-care generation (a recent ad campaign: “Finally, Healthcare That Hears You” timed to clinic openings in Manhattan and Brooklyn). And also we can look at its visual identity as a how-to guide to coding safe space for women.

Need help talking women wellness? Get in touch at: hello@crowdDNA.com

Join Crowd DNA Amsterdam’s Luzie Richt and London’s Dr Jennifer Simon for our latest webinar in Amsterdam, as we look at the changing articulations of womanhood and how brands can respond...

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April 22, 15:00-15:45 CET – sign up

(Access via Demio; 45 minutes, followed by Q&A)

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We’re very excited to confirm our latest webinar in Amsterdam, in which we’ll explore how women are represented in culture and how brands can engage with a more future-facing portrayal through gender literacy.

With 80 percent of Gen Z women identifying as feminist, but around half of young men claiming that feminism has ‘gone too far’, there’s plenty to discuss. This webinar will join the conversation by exploring the female story – from current representations within the themes of family, relationships and self expression; to examining how narratives are being disrupted and reimagined by culturally relevant brands.   

Presented by Crowd DNA Amsterdam’s Luzie Richt and London’s Dr Jennifer Simon, this session will consider:

– The dominant representation of ‘womanhood’ in three key areas – sex and relationships, family and self expression

– What the new, emergent codes are, and how semiotics can help unpack them

– How brands can take inspiration from the multitude of ways women live their lives

– What all this means for brands looking to future proof and remain culturally relevant to their audience

– How to keep up as more expressions of identity evolve and scripts of gender are rewritten.

We hope you can make it!

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April 22, 15:00-15:45 CET – sign up

(Access via Demio; 45 minutes, followed by Q&A)

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They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but a lack of human connection has forced us to completely rethink our love lives. Our new edition of Crowd Tracks opens up...

The fifth edition of Crowd Tracks is now live and available to download here. Crowd Tracks is our regular exploration of unstructured social data, uncovering emerging trends using our Culture At Scale method. This time round, we’re covering the fascinating world of sex and relationships, analysing relevant conversation and interactions over the last four months.

After a year quite unlike any other, the way we discuss and approach dating, sex and relationships is in flux. Following a Covid-staggered start of ‘can we, can’t we?’, many of us have succumbed to yet another lockdown of minimal romancing. While dating culture has stalled and the novelty of Zoom dates has fizzled out, people have been experimenting with new ways to find fulfilment. Whether that’s looking inward and practicing self care or navigating the burgeoning worlds of sex tech and science, pleasure will always prevail. 

The full report features:

– Viral stories from around the world – from Jojo Siwa’s announcement on TikTok, to a new, openly-gay Indian podcast and the Japanese government’s investment in AI matchmaking

– A language tracker highlighting the shifting discourse and tone when it comes to love, relationships and online dating culture

– An Instagram-based image analysis unpacking over 450,000 images relating to romance, revealing the most popular backdrops and colour choices

– A closer look at Lora DiCarlo – the brand on a mission to destigmatize sex tech with help from Cara Delevingne, with discussion around the pitfalls of inclusivity in this area

– Trends analysis of the increasing presence of data and science in our bedrooms, as well as the rise of singledom as an act of self care.

Download the full copy of Crowd Tracks: Sex & Relationships here.

Culture At Scale at Crowd DNA

At Crowd DNA, we’re constantly tracking conversations online across a range of categories. We deploy social media and other unstructured data sources in a number of ways; either as a stand-alone method (including producing one-off and periodical reports for our clients) or integrated alongside semiotic, ethnographic and quantitative approaches. If you’d like to find out more about how we can use Culture At Scale to meet your business challenges, get in touch.

Join Crowd DNA Sydney’s Erryn Balzan, and our friends at 72andSunny, for a session mastering how brands can engage with new expressions of maleness…

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March 18, 1pm-1.45pm AEST – sign up

(Access via Zoom; 45 minutes including Q&A)

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As narratives of gender continue to evolve in pretty much all corners of the globe, the way we express and represent masculinity is changing. A male misery epidemic, the exposure of toxic masculinity and a progressive Gen Z agenda are reframing what it means to be a man today. Without intervention, brands that speak to men are at risk of falling behind.

This session, presented by associate director Erryn Balzan and co-hosted with 72andSunny, will consider:

–  The cultural shifts impacting narratives of masculinity and the new, emerging expressions

–  How brands can harness these opportunities to drive comms, product innovation and more

–  What we can learn from recent brand and cultural examples in Australia and beyond

–  How to communicate authentically, while avoiding the slippery slope of tokenism.

We’ll round off our discussion with a Q&A panel made up of modern male representatives, featuring: Jason Ball (start-up founder and mental health advocate), Kyle Hugall (head of creative strategy, Lion) and Jimmy Nice (musician and artist).

With the image of a ‘true, blue, Aussie bloke’ so deeply ingrained in our psyches, we look forward to uncovering fresh narratives to help brands rethink and remain culturally relevant, but also challenge our own biases too. Hope you can make it!

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March 18, 1pm-1.45pm AEST – sign up

(Access via Zoom; 45 minutes including Q&A)

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We've gathered excerpts from Crowd DNA NYC’s recent webinar and KIN panel discussion exploring the cultural hotspots of the beauty category...

It’s been a busy couple of months for Crowd DNA webinars. We’ve covered topics ranging from hope and scenario planning, to TikTok and, in the case of our most recent event: beauty. 

The beauty category is already a hotspot for cultural change. But with the rise of challenger brands, the demand for greater diversity and an ambition to redefine what beauty even looks like, things are moving fast. To dive deeper into these themes, we combined trends and culture at scale analysis with a panel discussion made up of contributors from our KIN network (shout outs and thanks to: Louisa Kinoshi, Niki Igbaroola and Cassandra Harner). 

Download the report below for highlights from our conversations covering four key topics:

1. The Current Culture Of Beauty

2. Cultural Appropriation

3. Cancel Culture

4. Cultural Representation

Bursting The Beauty Bubble: Excerpts from our recent webinar

Thanks to all that joined us. Please get in touch with any questions, or if you would like to hear more about our thinking surrounding the beauty category. And watch this space for more Crowd DNA webinars coming soon.

Bursting The Beauty Bubble: Excerpts from our recent webinar

How do you get your kicks? In the first in a regular series of culture decodes, Crowd DNA's Bridget Dalton examines changing representations of women’s pleasure, through the perspective of one brand in particular: audio streaming service Dipsea...

Pleasure is a universal aspiration, but how it’s represented is often culturally determined. For a long time brands have been signalling pleasure through formulaic cues (oozing chocolate cake, anyone?), so we thought we’d get past the repetition and use semiotics to decode the emergent ways that brands are communicating pleasure – through the perspective of one brand in particular: Dipsea.

In the West, a very brief history of pleasure reveals how it was traditionally defined by Christian ideas of good and evil. Bodily indulgence was framed as sinful, and therefore shameful. Following these morality lines, pleasure is still often viewed as overly sexual, secretive and naughty – ice cream is bad; perfume is mysterious; and sex is either a fuzzy, saccharine affair or the deep, dark functionality of Pornhub. 

Dipsea – an audio streaming service specialising in erotic short stories to empower women – looks beyond these traditional signifiers of sexual desire. The brand is working hard to renegotiate the cues of pleasure by emphasising self love and removing the all too frequent suggestion of female transgression. 

As we’ll see, the app actually shares its visual identity with much less kinky sources of pleasure – such as beauty apps, FMCG brands and liberal politics. This close semiotic relationship between an intimate brand and seemingly unrelated categories can tell us a lot about the new narratives of pleasure resonating with millennial generations. We explore three of these new codes of pleasure below.

Pleasure as tasteful and safe

Dipsea’s gender neutral block colours provide tastefully modern, carefully curated contrasts. In the context of pleasure in the #MeToo era, it’s interesting to observe how the uniform tone and lack of depth work to limit any sense of mystery or unknown; this is a very safe type of sensuality. The absence of shadow suggests the absence of menace and again codes pleasure as a secure space, not a risky romp to the dark side. This sense of safety represents an important shift away from the dark colours and hints of violence (fluffy handcuffs, Fifty Shades Of Grey) often associated with sex and sex products. 

Pleasure as important and trustworthy

Historically, serif typefaces and capital letters were to be found in sombre, authoritarian spaces such as banks and museums. Today, they’re commonly used by liberal institutions such as London’s Southbank Centre and The Guardian. More recently still, these font styles are also found in more indulgent spaces, such as personal care and television (eg Treatwell and Netflix’s The Politician). Dipsea’s use of the font follows this lineage and codes pleasure as deserving of respect and trust. It’s serious business and, rather than hidden and private, pleasure deserves a platform and can even be a source of pride.

Pleasure as fluid and complex

Finally, Dipsea’s use of secondary and tertiary colours arranged in amorphous shapes code pleasure as complex and natural. The way the organic shapes in the Dipsea app and comms flow over the edge of the images reinforces that desire is fluid and unbound. Here, discovery and exploration are possible beyond the standard perimeters of pleasure. This helps Dispea communicate another important shift: that pleasure can be found in experimentation and beyond the traditional binaries of gender and monogamy. 

Altogether, these three codes demonstrate how modern pleasure is coming out of the guilt-ridden, shadows of darkness into the light of empowered nuance. By decoding brands like Dispea at the forefront of cultural change, we can learn to speak the new language of intimacy, sex, and human connection. Pleasure is a human right for all of us, and semiotics helps us understand how to effectively communicate it in an ever-changing cultural context. 

Need help talking pleasure? Get in touch at: hello@crowdDNA.com 

Come join Crowd DNA and 72andSunny in Sydney for New Narratives: Engaging With Modern Women, as we look at changing articulations of feminity...

Date: November 27

Time: 5.30pm

Location: Lion, Level 7, 68 York Street, Sydney, 2000

We’re very excited to confirm our debut event in Sydney – a partnership with the good folk at 72andSunny, in which, using an archetypes model, we’ll be getting into how to engage with modern women.

With 70% of Australian Gen Z women identifying as feminist and 33% feeling the #MeToo movement hasn’t gone far enough, there’s plenty to discuss. This session will explore the past, present and future of the female story  – from how certain brand archetypes have been used to reinforce gender codes; to then examining how these codes are being disrupted and reimagined.

Part presentation, part panel discussion, this will be an informal session looking at how brands can engage with modern Australian women through gender literacy.

You’ll get to hear from Crowd DNA’s Sydney director, Elyse Pigram and 72andSunny strategist Sarah Tan.

And we’re excited to confirm a wonderful line-up of panellists who’ll dig into the themes: Dr Kate Adams (Bondi Vet), Amy Darvill (brand director, craft beers, Lion), Taryn Williams (founder of theright.fit and WINK Models), Tara McKenty (creative director, Google); plus a few more in the pipeline.

Thanks also to our hosts, Lion (hint: there’ll be some beers at the wrap-up).

If you’d like to come along, please get in touch with Elyse Pigram.

We’ve been moving on our How To Speak (Wo)Man work recently, with Crowd DNA’s Elyse Pigram and Joey Zeelen sharing it with clients. One of the key themes: whether we should even be talking about binary expressions of gender in the first place…

This is not the first time we’ve talked about how brands can address gender (in fact, we’re doing it again soon in Singapore), but we’re finding good sense in combining both of our presentations on the topic to deliver a holistic view on ensuring brand messaging rings true. 

First, Elyse has been looking at femininity today, exploring why it is that women still don’t feel represented by brands. This part of the presentation uses a simple Jungian framework of female archetypes traditionally perpetuated in media and culture, of ‘the innocent’, ‘lover’ and ‘caregiver’. The examples from brands of childlike playfulness, domesticated housewives, and barely-dressed women provide evidence of how not to speak to today’s woman.

Moving into the present, Elyse shows that there’s no longer just one archetype – or stereotype-fits-all. Women are seeking to reclaim their identity, in all its varying forms, which means reframing and rethinking the way womanhood is represented to make it more diverse, inclusive and strong. Women as the ‘everywoman’ (think Dove’s Real Beauty, HBO’s Girls), ‘heroes’ (think Always’ Like A Girl, Beyonce, the latest Wonder Woman films), ‘rebels’ and ‘creators’ are the key archetypes to focus on and offer brands direction on how to be relevant and representational.

This shift in female narratives has been boosted by cultural movements such as #MeToo, better trans visibility and open discussion changing the conversation around what it means to be a woman in 2019. Now more than ever, there is a sense of urgency for brands to get it right in the ways they express themselves to the modern woman. Elyse emphasised that this succeeds through brands sharing the fluid and varied experiences of women. (You can download our How To Speak Woman report here.)

Having established that approaches to female identity are changing across society, media and advertising, Joey then looks at how the land lies for masculinity – what does it mean to be a man in 2019? Over the last couple of years, a lot has changed (you can take a look at our 2017 research here to see how things have moved on). Gender is becoming more fluid and non-binary, and masculinity more individual.

We see men speaking more freely about their feelings (Prince Harry tackling mental health), and turning their backs on traditional ideas of what it is to be a man. Mainstream media – such as Beautiful Boy and McCain’s We Are Family ads – has been disrupting ideas of nuclear families and father roles have been represented to be more playful and emotional. But amidst all this, there is still a long way to go. With much talk swirling around of ‘masculinity in crisis’,  Joey identifies three main tensions that need to be addressed by brands:

1. Toxic masculinity – still being peddled by cultural figures such as Donald Trump and Piers Morgan

2. Wellbeing and mental health – male suicide remains the biggest killer of young men in many Western societies

3. How to align feminism and progress masculinity – how can men be authentically supportive and work out their place in propelling the cause forward?

While we’re still figuring out the definition of being a man, brands need to keep opening up the conversation and (as with femininity) challenging stereotypes.

To finish, Joey and Elyse summed up the key takeouts for brands and what this all means for how to speak (wo)man:

– We need to recognise that femininity is all about individuality and celebrating difference

– We need to keep working to define and shape new expressions of masculinity that are nuanced and empathetic – and not binary

– Brands need to walk the talk, and back up their messaging with credible action

– Let’s celebrate and harness male goodwill towards female progress

– Consider producing products that don’t have a  gender – try talking to men and women as one

– Take male relationships out of the locker room, and nurture closer connection

– Talk to your audience, not about them. By engaging people with different experiences, and expressions of gender, we can better express and represent them

If you would like us to come and talk to your company about expressions of gender in modern day culture, please email us at hello@crowdDNA.com