Campaigns That Promote Equality for Women and Girls
Women and girls aren't often the focus of media campaigns. They are often relegated to side roles and characters, or perpetuate negative stereotypes (often centering around unrealistic expectations). It's exciting and refreshing when campaigns break this mold, however.
The latest (2022) Smarties Awards showcase and highlight campaigns that do just this. Below are some award-winning campaigns that powerfully promote equity for women and girls, as well as dispel stereotypes and falsehoods.
Bru
Indian coffee brand Bru wanted to showcase gender equality in marriage. To do so, it created short-form OTT videos and leveraged a chatbot on WhatsApp. The video series portrayed a married couple, Ram and Ranjani; in one clip, Ram was shown making coffee for his wife. Further, the chatbot shared advice and other information regarding chores.
Dove
In four different campaigns, Dove sought to shed light on toxic beauty standards. For instance, in "Reverse Selfie," Dove sought to portray "the damage retouching apps can do to the self-esteem of young people by revealing what girls were doing to manipulate their faces and bodies before posting online. Filters and photo-editing apps were pressuring girls into altering their images to the point at which they were hardly recognizable," as explained in the ANA case study. Dove partnered with people prominent on TikTok to spread the message.
In "Detox Your Feed," Dove wanted to show how beauty influencers can negatively affect teenage girls' self-esteem, as the brand found that "59 percent of girls have felt better after unfollowing idealized beauty content from social media influencers." To combat this trend, the company developed videos of moms parodically repeating the negative advice and showed a real mother and daughter reflecting on the video.
Further, in #StopTheBeautyTest, Dove conducted a study that discovered that 80 percent of schoolgirls in India "face a beauty test." The company thus illustrated how body shaming starts early.
Finally, Dove's "Stop the Beauty Test 2.0" aimed to showcase how beauty standards hurt girls, and worked with 13 Indian women to share their stories in a film.
Boost
To promote equality in women's sports, particularly women's cricket in India, Boost partnered with mobile game World Cricket Championship 3 to launch the first-ever cricket video game featuring an all-female team.
TIM
Brazilian telecommunications company TIM wanted to provide support for women who have been abused. To do so, it created its campaign "Silent Hit" to illustrate how women are silenced. The video lyric-less was released on March 8, 2022, International Women's Day.
As the ANA case study explains, "viewers initially thought that there were some technical issues related to the lack of sound. The artists and a squad of female influencers then came in to set the record straight. They used the hashtag #FreeYourVoice to encourage Brazilian women to share their histories." The video then encouraged people to check out TIM's Positive Women app.
Vim
To dispel gender myths and inequalities in India through humor, Vim Liquid created a campaign that focused on men doing domestic chores. The company partnered with male model Milind Soman who is known "for his 'macho' image." Two short videos were created as well as a Voice Assistant (voiced by Soman) to help men do chores. Further, a calendar was shot and released with Soman to promote men's role in dish-washing.
KangShiFu and MasterKong
KangShiFu sought to support girls in China through the creation of a reality show, KangShiFu. The show's mission was to showcase real voices and help "dismantle the stereotype that girls need to be sweet in order to be powerful," as stated in the ANA case study.
The case study went on to say that "hip-hop, a once underground culture in China, is now one such mainstream artform where the young female generation can make themselves heard. So, the brand launched 'Girls Like Us' — China's first all-female hip-hop variety show. The show was streamed on Tencent's platforms. Girls across China were invited to audition for the show and take part in the social movement as an ambassador for girls across China."
Check out more Smarties Awards here.
Joanna Fragopoulos is a director of editorial and content development at ANA.
The views and opinions expressed in Industry Insights are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.