Heineken uses hard numbers to foster better representation in social media ads

But before unpacking why the findings could prove so valuable to those marketers, it’s worth understanding the scope: conducted in the first quarter, the research spanned 108,000 image and video assets backed by over $804 million in media spend from 2,191 brands across 163 marketers between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024. During this period it racked creative elements across 11 digital channels. Each asset was tagged with thousands of creative attributes including character, gender, age, skin tone and the context in which they appeared such as leadership, professional, physical, family or domestic roles. 

The results tell a familiar, but urgent story. 

In 2024, characters with lighter skin tones were not only more frequently featured in the ads tracked by Creativex, they were also disproportionately backed. A third (33%) of characters had the lightest skin tones, compared to just 10% with deeper skin tones. And when it came to investment, characters with the lightest skin tones received four times more ad spend than those with the deepest. 

Worse still, representation is declining. In 2022, less than a fifth (17%) of characters had the deepest skin tones, according to CreativeX. By 2023, that number had dropped to 11% worldwide. In the U.S. specifically, it’s 8%. 

And the disparity isn’t just about screen time, it’s about status too. 

Characters with lighter skin tones were 5.6X more likely to be shown in leadership roles than those with deeper skin tones, according to the same CreativeX report. When it came to professional settings that gap narrowed slightly but remained stark: lighter-skinned characters were 3.9 times more likely to be portrayed in professional roles. 

Needless to say, these findings have given Heineken’s marketers something to chew on. It doesn’t just highlight a representation problem – it calls out a creative blind spot. And in today’s media landscape, that’s not just a cultural risk, it’s a commercial one. 

“We still indeed don’t necessarily give teams any hard commitments. We share these insights and from these insights, we just see that there’s a lot more demand within our organization,” said Heineken’s Hoppe. “So a lot more teams are starting to chime in, lean in and also start to ask questions, and reach out to the wider CreativeX team on what these particular insights actually mean for their teams.”

That said, there’s no requirement for those marketers to act on those insights. But even as an optional resource, it’s already reshaping internal conversations and subsequently its advertising on social media. 

“So what we’ve done also last year is to start to expand the scope for representation to more of our international brand portfolio,” said Hoppe. “Desperados, [Birra] Moretti, Amstel have all been part of an analysis that CreativeX has run where they also identify specific pillars of interest or specific pillars that might be most relevant for a brand to focus on.”

Take the topic of gender representation specifically, for instance. 

Initially, the split between male and female representation in Heineken’s ads globally was around 80% male dominated vs. 20% female, according to the brewer’s own analysis of CreativeX’s research into advertising for its brands last year. More recent insights from earlier this year put that ratio at 55% to 45%, Hoppe continued. 

Ultimately, the learning was that ads with female characters tend to drive two times higher brand favorability with social media users than ads that only portray men or male-centered content, he added. 

“These types of insights are really powerful for our brand teams to actually absorb within the creative process, and also think about whenever they’re creating their media strategies and creative strategies,” he said. “The brand only started this insights partnership with CreativeX two or three years ago and it’s still a “very delicate topic for a lot of our teams.”

Diversity has been a point of contention for marketers. On one hand, the culture wars have put brands in the hot seat for anything perceived to be so-called woke marketing. On the other hand, marketers acknowledge the need to target multicultural audiences in the name of sales and growth. 

In an attempt to wade warily through all this, marketers have retooled their approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. For example, McDonald’s rebranded its diversity team as the “Global Inclusion Team,” and said it would sunset the concept of setting “aspirational representation goals” to instead focus on embedding inclusion practices into everyday operations. It’s a shift in tone as much as strategy, one that seems designed to placate DEI skeptics without completely abandoning the internal infrastructure built over the past few years. 

And gone are the days when CMOs leaned into cultural discourse with cold staves and sweeping statements. That playbook has changed. The reasons are layered – fatigue, backlash, shifting expectations – but the strategy, at least from those who haven’t completely checked out – is clear: be quieter, more deliberate and let the work do the talking.

“It baffles me that brands who operate with a bottom line focus are ignoring the decades of empirical data that represents that [diversity] is a smarter approach,” said Nicholas Love, CEO of Kulur Group challenger brand agency, and founder and executive director of nonprofit Dope Thinkers.