Our survey of the marketing and advertising articles you should be reading this week.

Sex Sells: Lessons In Depicting Real Women In Advertising

The Drum

In 2018, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) passed a rule banning harmful gender stereotypes, yet sexism in ads persists and research shows that 90 percent of women don’t consider ads relevant to them.

Why it matters: To ensure that women feel seen in today’s advertising, Cindy Gallop, founder of the IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn, says brands must mandate that agencies have gender-equal leadership.

Why Planning For The Next Crisis Is The Real New Normal

Ad Age

As a result of the pandemic, Feeding America now expects 42 million people could experience food insecurity in 2021, including 13 million children. Chief marketing officer Catherine Davis says its strong relationships with media outlets and support from purpose-driven brands helped amplify awareness of the growing issue.

Why it matters: Davis says that marketers can more effectively face the next set of unpredictable challenges by planning for what they know, building in time for reactive work and investing in resources that enable them to stay on top of consumer sentiment.

How The Pandemic Challenges Companies That Use Predictive Models

VentureBeat

Dan Simion, vice president of artificial intelligence for Capgemini North America, says that companies are struggling to retrain machine learning to keep up with changing consumer behavior, adding that the challenges are acute in commerce.

Why it matters: As an example, Simion mentions how one of Capgemini’s customers—a multibillion-dollar global consumer packaged goods brand in the frozen food sector—had to adjust to trends based on the different pandemic restrictions of specific regions and states.

Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol Shares His Playbook For Leading The Chain To $2.8 Billion In Digital Sales In Just Three Years

Business Insider

Since Brian Niccol took the reins at Chipotle, the business’s loyalty program tied to its mobile app grew to 20 million members since launching in March 2019 while its digital sales grew 174.1 percent to $2.8 billion, accounting for 46.2 percent of sales in 2020.

Why it matters: Under Niccol’s leadership, nothing at Chipotle gets introduced until it’s rigorously tested, its second food line for assembling off-premise orders has been revamped and the brand’s headquarters were moved from Denver to Newport Beach, California.

10 Truths About Marketing After The Pandemic

Harvard Business Review

According to Janet Balis, a principal with Ernst & Young LLP, where she works as a global advisory leader for media and entertainment, says that a new pandemic-induced marketing truth to embrace is not competing with your competitors, but rather competing with the last best experience your customer had.

Why it matters: To ensure their experiences meet their customers’ rising expectations, companies should make brand scores a primary key performance indicator and align individual and collective goals across the journey so that disconnects between functional silos are invisible to the end customer.