New York (January 21, 2020) — The ANA today announced that prominent marketing and media executive Nadine Karp McHugh has been named the first president of SeeHer, its industry-leading movement for gender equality in advertising, marketing, and entertainment.

The move comes as part of the ANA’s 2020 plan to operationalize the SeeHer movement within its structure to maximize benefits through the use of its expansive capabilities and resources.

“I am delighted to have Nadine officially on the team,” said ANA CEO Bob Liodice. “A key advocate since our launch, her appointment to this newly created position opens a new chapter in the explosive growth of the SeeHer movement, one of the ANA’s most important initiatives. Under her leadership, SeeHer will tap into all ANA business systems and expand our many partnerships to propel it to the next level.”

Founded in 2016, SeeHer’s mission is to increase accurate portrayals of girls and women in advertising, media, and entertainment, with the original goal to reduce unconscious bias and authentic portrayals by 20 percent by 2020. The group surpassed that goal in late 2018 and expanded the mission to have 80 percent of measured media bias-free by 2030. With the collective power of the world’s largest brands, that goal is possible.

“I’m excited to join the ANA to lead this important effort and to partner with marketers, agencies, and media companies,” said Karp McHugh. “With its great body of work, SeeHer has proven it drives members’ bottom-line growth, as well as being equally important for our culture. There is an incredible potential to drive widespread change that will benefit everyone.”

The SeeHer movement is grounded in data. Its Gender Equality Measure™ (GEM™) is the industry’s most influential voice for eliminating unconscious bias and increasing gender equality in advertising, marketing, media, and programming. Since its inception, the metric has been used to evaluate more than 110,000 ads in 14 global markets and top Nielsen programming. GEM is widely recognized as the gold standard in global measurement for gender equality.

Karp McHugh, a marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience across both the client and agency side, brings a wealth of industry knowledge to her new role. Throughout her career, she has led major transformations across businesses in a dynamic, tech-driven landscape.

In her most recent role, Karp McHugh worked for more than five years as SVP of omnimedia strategy, data-driven media, and creative solutions at L’Oréal, where she helped transform the marketer’s U.S. operations into a best-in-class, digitized strategic marketing organization with data and ROI at the core.

Prior to joining L’Oréal, Karp McHugh was VP of global integrated media communications at Colgate-Palmolive. Her agency experience includes Mindshare and Ogilvy, both WPP agencies, where she served as managing director on the Unilever account before being promoted to managing partner and chief client officer.

Throughout her career, Karp McHugh has been a tireless champion of women and gender equality initiatives. She served as vice president and a member of the board of directors at She Runs It (formerly AWNY) and served as an ANA Board member. A sought-after public speaker, she has spoken at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Advertising Week, ARF (Advertising Research Federation), and The FQ equality events. She was a co-creator of the first “FanGirls” effort with iHeartRadio, sponsored by L’Oréal Paris, which was created to elevate the voice of women in music and just completed its third successful year. She was a core member of the Dove Masterbrand team that activated the award-winning “Campaign for Real Beauty” and helped to create one of the first webisode series by moms, for moms, and about moms, called In the Motherhood.

Karp McHugh will report to Liodice and join the ANA executive management team.

About SeeHer

Despite strides made in recent years to accurately portray women and girls in media, unconscious bias persists throughout advertising and entertainment. The average age, race, and body type of women depicted in media today still represent only a small fraction of the female population. Led by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), SeeHer is a collective of leading marketers committed to creating advertising and supporting content that portrays women and girls as they really are. It launched in June 2016 in partnership with The Female Quotient (The FQ) in Washington, D.C. at the United State of Women. To help marketers benchmark success, the group developed Gender Equality Measure™ (GEM™), the first research methodology that quantifies gender bias in ads and programming. GEM shows that content portraying women accurately dramatically increases purchase intent and brand reputation, increasing return on investment by as much as 30 percent. GEM won the prestigious 2017 ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award, and the methodology became the industry standard, which led to a global rollout in 2018. In 2019 the movement expanded into new verticals, including sports (#SeeHerInSports) and music (#SeeHerHearHer.) Visit SeeHer.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @SeeHer2020.

About the ANA
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers)’s mission is to drive growth for marketing professionals, for brands and businesses, and for the industry. Growth is foundational for all participants in the ecosystem. The ANA seeks to align those interests by leveraging the 12-point ANA Masters Circle agenda, which has been endorsed and embraced by the ANA Board of Directors and the Global CMO Growth Council. The ANA’s membership consists of more than 1,600 domestic and international companies, including over 1,000 client-side marketers and nonprofit fundraisers and 600 marketing solutions providers (data science and technology companies, ad agencies, publishers, media companies, suppliers, and vendors). Collectively, ANA member companies represent 20,000 brands, engage 50,000 industry professionals, and invest more than $400 billion in marketing and advertising annually.

Media Contact:
ANA
John Wolfe
Director of Communications
Office: 212.455.8011
Cell: 914.659.8663
Email: jwolfe@ana.net