The Bose brand launched the “Turn the Dial” advertising campaign, a commercial initiative aimed at “Mixing up the music industry by supporting women and non-binary producers” to narrow the gender gap in music production. “Turn the Dial” is oriented towards music created by a greater diversity of producers, increasing the number of women engaged in the music industry, and increasing the opportunities for women to produce music. https://www.bose.com/stories/turn-the-dial-initiative
Bose invited iconic artists and producers H.E.R., PinkPantheress, BLOND: ISH and WondaGurl as representatives of “Turn the Dial” and has developed various creative projects and content sessions, in the case of “Anne-Marie Writes a Song in 3 Hours”, Bose used a documentary format to emphasize the personal narratives of individuals in the music industry and present the process of making music. Through this campaign, Bose has encouraged the authentic participation of female music creators, to achieve value diffusion, and to string together a strong emotional link with female consumers, allowing them to feel the warmth of the brand and attempting to push for, affirmative action across the entire music field.
Compared to other brands that are more “conservative” in their attitude towards gender issues, Bose’s initiative portrays structural gender injustices and brings more conceptual depth to the brand’s core. The ‘Sound is Power Impact Board’ established by Bose and ‘She Is the Music’https://sheisthemusic.org will be an important channel for female and non-binary musicians to launch their solo music into the public arena, and the success of their work will bring commercial profits to Bose in turn. Moreover, ‘The Inaugural Producer of the Year Award’https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/rosalia-wins-producer-of-the-year-award-presented-by-bose-1235280993/ created by Bose and ‘Billboard’ will enhance the social impact of the brand on a broader scale. This is the reason why “Turn the Dial” is so successful as a marketing campaign. Throughout the advertising initiative, Bose blurred the description and promotion of the headset product (in a way that only attached an additional link and let all participants in the campaign use Bose products) to distinguish it from regular marketing campaigns, which will also provide the brand with a more lasting benefit.
In the contemporary cultural market, women play the dominant role with strong choices and mobility, and they are also the main contributors to the upgrading of consumption. The media attempts to deconstruct the spiritual values of women themselves, just as numerous commercial products or advertisements capable of evoking “popular feminism”, and then promote the entity of consumption by women. But we cannot ignore the fact that such cultural and industrial products formed by the mass market and the flux economy, integrate women’s consciousness from a utilitarian perspective.
Commercial advertisements reflect the flourishing feminism in the sociocultural context through “mirroring”, utilizing the commercial value of women’s identity, and that is the reason why feminism has become visible in advertisement creativity. In contrast to the visibility of feminism itself, commercial brands attempt to create products that aim to leverage the commercial value of the feminine orientation, forming an economy of visibility.
We cannot deny the phenomenon that many brands have transformed feminism into a symbol and then attached it to their commercial brands, leading to a consumerism that incorporates feminism. Many advertisements which attempt to convey the idea of feminism fall into the misconception of gender stereotypes. The rationale of feminism in achieving affirmative action is to overcome the inherent superiority of patriarchy, rather than enlarging women’s marginality, causing them a specialized identity to participate in contexts or situations which should be equal. As mentioned in “Turn the Dial”, the slogan “call me producer, not a female producer” correctly conveys the feminist concept of not rejecting the label of “female”, but the implicit sexism under the label of “female”.