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New York Festivals International Advertising Awards announced Vox Media’s “The Beauty of Blackness” for client Sephora as the 2022 SeeHer Lens Award winner.
The SeeHer Lens Award is a partnership between New York Festivals, The Female Quotient (The FQ), and the ANA and honors best-in-class creative film work submitted to the competition that exemplifies gender equality and accurate portrayals of women and girls in advertising.
SeeHer is a collective of marketers, media organizations and industry influencers committed to creating advertising and supporting content that portrays women and girls as they. The SeeHer Lens Award, now in its second year, celebrates advertisers who are driving change and bringing visibility to creative content that supports the ideals of the SeeHer movement. SeeHer serves as the catalyst, harnessing the collective power of the entire marketing and media ecosystem, to drive change.
“We are inspired by The Beauty of Blackness, the documentary shares a vital story that shines a light on the important contributions of Black culture in the world of beauty and shares the journey of the influential female executives who brought the beloved brand Fashion Fair Cosmetics back from bankruptcy,” said Shelley Zalis, CEO, The Female Quotient, Co-Founder, SeeHer. “The award-winning film embodies SeeHer’s mission of accurate representation and by sharing these important stories we can together become a more conscious creative community and create lasting change.”
“New York Festivals is thrilled to shine a spotlight on this important documentary film that chronicles the story of two dynamic women leaders who orchestrated the re-emergence of a world-class and respected historical brand, Fashion Fair Cosmetics,” said Scott Rose, Executive Director, New York Festivals Advertising Awards. “This creative project and the story that it portrays are so worthy of the 2022 SeeHer Lens Award.”
The 2022 SeeHer Lens Award winner “The Beauty of Blackness” is a feature-length documentary produced by Epic Stories the branded storytelling arm of Vox Media and Creative Production in collaboration with Sephora, Digitas, and Ventureland. The film documents the resurgence of the first cosmetics brand to cater to black women, Fashion Fair Cosmetics, as the company’s new owners, Desiree Rogers and Cheryl Mayberry-McKissack brought it back from bankruptcy.
“It's an honor to be selected for the NYF “SeeHer Lens” Award. We are proud to have partnered with Sephora and Digitas who see the value in sharing this important story and shining a light on the inequalities of the beauty industry, in an effort to move it forward. By leaning on true, inspirational stories, like the one told for Fashion Fair in this film, brands have the opportunity to power real change,” commented Kiana Moore, co-director of The Beauty of Blackness and the VP of Content Production, Head of Epic Digital at Vox Media.
The winning feature documentary chronicles Fashion Fair’s legacy: both its rise and fall, and through Fashion Fair’s tumultuous and triumphant story, and examines the beauty industry’s long history of discrimination, while also highlighting a new generation pioneering the future for Black women working in beauty.
This year’s New York Festivals film entries were reviewed by members of the New York Festivals Grand Jury. Entries nominated for the SeeHer Award were judged by the SeeHer jury panel using the SeeHer Gender Equality Measure, (GEM®), the first data-driven methodology for identifying gender bias in media. GEM® has become the global measurement standard, measuring 180,000+ ads, representing 87 percent of worldwide ad spend.
