In the year 2020 we are continuing to see brands using their platforms to support real societal issues; from inequalities in race, gender and sexuality to world problems such as politics, climate change and more… brands are using campaigns, not only just to promote their products and/or services, but also for the greater good of their consumers and the general population.
Female empowerment is something that we strive to be an active catalyst for, and that’s why these girl power campaigns sit so close to our heart. We wanted to share with you some of our favourite campaigns, pushing forward the message that, regardless of what anyone might think, women CAN!
Girl Power!
We recently put together a campaign for Netflix, to promote the release of their brand-new film ‘Enola Holmes’ – based on the books by Nancy Springer. The story champions Enola, the younger sister of ‘The World’s Greatest Detective’ Sherlock Holmes.
Netflix commissioned us to create 5 sculptures depicting strong, young female characters. Each sculpture represented a real woman who’d had real impact in their field – but perhaps never received the full recognition they deserved. These sculptures were placed next to real, pre-existing statues of their brothers in 5 different cities across the UK. The message being that accomplished women should and will be celebrated and recognised just the same as accomplished men!
You can find out more about this stunt on our What We Do page. Alternatively, you can read the case study here.
We really loved being a part this campaign! So much so that it encouraged us to share some of our favourite brand campaigns empowering women around the world…
Nike – Dream Crazier
Sportswear super-brand Nike started their ‘Dream Crazier’ campaign to encourage people to break free from feelings of restriction, fly high and aim even higher.
They involved a number of their biggest name athletes in this campaign but they had, one of the most decorated and recognisable female athletes in sporting history, Serena Williams take the role of being one of the campaign’s main faces.
She is quoted a lot touching on her time, not only in the world of sports, but in the world we all live in. Serena speaks about how women are restricted, told not to show emotion and that dreaming of equal opportunity and treatment is just a dream, nothing more.
This powerful advertisement displays a lot of Serena’s successes, as well as a number of other historical female sporting figures, making for a highly inspiring piece of content that shows women just how much they can achieve when they believe.
Watch the video for yourself, below…
Smirnoff x Spotify – The Equalizer
Smirnoff and Spotify wanted to shine a light on the disproportionate streaming numbers that female artists have received in comparison to their male counterparts. These two industry giants combined to create ‘The Equalizer’.
The Equalizer is an interface that evaluates the listening history of Spotify users and displays the percentage ratio of the songs they’d listened to by male artists in comparison to female artists. The great thing about it is that, once it’s shared your listening data, the interface allowed you to balance your listening, in line with your analysed taste, by curating a playlist that features both male and female artists equally.
The spearhead of the campaign was, world-famous DJ and LGBTQ+ advocate, Honey Dijon. She speaks on how gender bias had affected her pathway and experiences in the world of music.
In addition to The Equalizer, Smirnoff also partnered with Global Radio and Live Nation to equalize festival line-ups throughout Europe.
GoldieBlox – Princess Machine
GoldieBlox are a cleverly named toy manufacturing brand whose products are designed to inspire and educate young girls about engineering. Their ‘Princess Machine’ advert showed a trio of girls, who were fed up of having the typical girly-girl stereotype forced onto them, using princesses and dolls to make an intricate and complex ‘machine’.
The ad conveys a message that the ‘princess’ ideology is perpetuated to the point where there aren’t enough other easily accessible avenues for young girls to explore. They’ve had enough and have decided to repurpose the toys that have been pushed upon them to build the Princess Machine.
The machine itself is just fascinating and completely captivating! Apparently, it took a team of mechanical engineers, civil engineers, and prop makers around three weeks to build. Take a look for yourself in the embedded video below…
