Sheryl Sandberg Talks Diversity and Privacy at Cannes Lions

Facebook Business

June 20, 2019

Yesterday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg sat down with Bloomberg journalist Caroline Hyde to discuss the ad industry’s responsibility to fight stereotypes, and Facebook’s responsibility to protect people’s privacy.

Dismantling stereotypes

Sandberg called for the ad industry to use its unique influence on culture to replace stereotypical images with more diverse, real portrayals of people in order to show people a broader possibility of who they can be.

People see more marketing messages by far, than they see all other media… If we market against stereotypes rather than to stereotypes, we’re going to make, I think, a really big difference.

Sandberg explained how marketing against stereotypes is not only the right thing to do for society, but it has also proven to drive results for businesses.

There’s a new study from last year showing that when you market against gender stereotypes you actually increase your brand awareness by 10% and your sales by 26%.

Source: Association of National Advertisers #SeeHer study, 2018

Privacy, data regulation and Facebook’s business model

Hyde noted that among the ad industry, many people question how Facebook can provide value to advertisers in the form of customer insights and effective reach while still respecting people’s privacy. Sandberg explained that Facebook can do both. She outlined how Facebook’s ad targeting system enables us to show ads to people who we think are most likely to be interested in the advertiser’s offerings without sharing any personal information about the people being reached. This enables businesses of all sizes, including small businesses, to grow by empowering them to reach customers in ways that were previously only available to larger companies—all while protecting people’s information.

And when it comes to issues of privacy and data regulation, Sandberg explained how Facebook is not just cooperating with government regulation, but is proactively calling for third-party regulation of the Internet and building features to give people more control over how their data is used. For example, even though the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), one of the most extensive privacy legislations, was only passed in the EU, Facebook took the same controls and made them available everywhere.

See highlights from Sandberg’s session on Watch.

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