Jane St. chronicles the opening of a new advertising agency that is dedicated to exploiting the insecurities of women for the purposes of advertising.

Like any good satire we played it completely straight. We used our own employees to showcase how jane. st was the perfect way for any product or service to capitalize on the new trend of femvertising.

We meet some of jane st.’s employees like their ‘Chief Empowerment Officer’ and ‘Confidence Director’.

We hear about new strategic planning models like C-LITT, which stands for the ‘Core Lady Insecurity To Target’.

We see motivational slogans like “If She’s Crying, She’s Buying”, male employees undergoing ‘intense empathy training’, and a photo shoot for a new brand of shampoo for all types of body hair called Sylk, featuring a female model with very thick armpit hair and an extremely full pubic bush.

The trend towards female empowerment ads or so-called ‘femvertising’ has been largely celebrated both within and outside the advertising industry. But with so many brands jumping on the ‘girl-power’ bandwagon in a more calculated than heartfelt manner the idea of inspiring real empowerment is at risk of being overshadowed by marketers with insincere motivations.

Sadly, this kind of ‘pink washing’ greatly diminishes the entire effort and has been criticized that it comes at the expense of real progress.

We hoped that this film would get marketers and agencies to think twice about using female empowerment strategies insincerely, by showing them how bad it can look when it’s done with the wrong motivations.