One of my favorite advertisements was the Microsoft campaign for female inventors—well, it wasn’t literally advertising female inventors—but it was about all of the things that women had developed throughout the years, and it was one of my favorite advertisements. It wasn’t actually centered on any single Microsoft product; rather, it was basically a branded advertisement for Microsoft as a whole, with no specific product in mind. The video grabbed my eye when I was watching something else on YouTube one day, and it stood out to me for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it was not your typical advertisement attempting to sell you something or telling you how fantastic a company was.
This advertisement was created to appeal to young girls and to get them to think about what is possible and how our impressions of certain things might sometimes be erroneous, among other things. Because it featured young females talking about creating things and how they were constantly taught at school that male inventors were the primary ones, I felt it was a nice program.
In the next pages, the advertisement displays all of the things that women have developed, including windshield wipers, the first computer algorithm, and several more things that you would never have believed were invented by females (Koning et al., 2019). The ads seemed appropriate because the message was all about encouraging young girls to realize that they, too, could invent something significant—or something that would change everyone’s lives. If my memory serves me correctly, there were more similar ads produced to commemorate International Women’s Day. I suppose you might call them “inspirational advertisements,” and the majority of the world’s most well-known businesses generate them on a regular basis. I believe they are significantly more compelling than a lot of other commercial advertising that is shown on television and other media platforms.
- You: The Circular Saw was invented by Tabitha Babbitt.
- You: Signal Flares were created by Martha Coston.
- You: Mary Anderson was a Windshield Wiper manufacturer.
- You: The Life Raft was created by Maria Beasley.
- You: A pioneer in laser cataract surgery was Patricia Bath.
- You: The Underwater Telescope was created by Sarah Mather.
- You: Bertha Benz designed Brake Pads.
- You: Yvonne Brill invented Satellite Propulsion.
Reference
Koning, R., Samila, S., & Ferguson, J. P. (2019). Female inventors and inventions.