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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.” - 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.

To view all the 2022 New York Festivals Advertising Awards winners please visit: 2022 Winners Showcase.

About New York Festivals:  New York Festivals^® Celebrating the World’s Best Work since 1957

• Advertising Awards
• AME Awards ®
• Bowery Awards
• NYF Health Awards ®
• Radio Awards
• TV & Film Awards

Entries to each of the competitions are judged around the world by panels of peers in their respective industries. For more information, go to www.newyorkfestivals.com.

About The Female Quotient
(The FQ) is dedicated to advancing equality around the world. The FQ provides companies and business leaders with the research, tools, and experiences to create equitable workplaces. Through best-in-class programming and content, it fosters powerful conversations around DE&I. The FQ's destination-turned-movement, the Equality Lounge®, has become a catalyst for change at major events and industry conferences around the world, including the World Economic Forum (Davos), Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and Cannes Lions, creating a global stage to connect and elevate women. Through its Business of Equality®, the FQ offers a suite of targeted tools and solutions to help leaders to close the gaps across parity, policy, and pipeline.  For more information, visit: www.thefemalequotient.com.

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, body type, and other aspects of women depicted in media today still represents only a small fraction of the female population. Led by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 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 really are. It launched in June 2016 in partnership with The Female Quotient (The FQ) in Washington DC 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 females accurately dramatically increases both purchase intent and brand reputation. In 2017 GEM^® won the prestigious ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award. The methodology quickly became the industry standard, which led to a global rollout in 2018. In 2019, the movement expanded into new verticals: sports (SeeHer In Sports) and music (SeeHer Hear Her). Visit SeeHer.com and follow @SeeHerOfficial on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.