Title	#WOMENDRIVERS
Brand	AUDI
Product/Service	SOCIAL MEDIA
Category	D02. Costs/Creative Performance PR Campaign
Entrant Company	ATOMIC Dublin, IRELAND
Advertising Agency	ATOMIC Dublin, IRELAND
Media Agency	MEDIACOM Dublin, IRELAND

Name	Company	Position
Anne Fleming	Atomic	Creative Director
Frances O'Rourke	Atomic	Copywriter
Ross Giles	Atomic	Art Director
Kerrie Sweeney	Atomic	Account Director
Hugh Curran	Atomic	Digital Director
Paul Byrne	Atomic	Digital Designer

The Campaign

It’s an uncomfortable truth that, despite many advancements in gender balance, a stigma remains around women drivers. Until the arrival of social networking the disparaging of women drivers was the prevail of locker rooms where groups of men would crack wise about how terrible their wife was at driving. Nowadays, in our share everything society, the immediate response is to post about it on social networks. And just in case your audience isn’t big enough you can attach #WomenDrivers to it. What was a negative stereotype has become a meme. A negative stereotype has gone viral. Having recognised this we felt that there was an opportunity for Audi to show leadership. Working with one of Ireland’s leading news outlets we curated, created and compiled a selection of articles that showed women drivers. Not just women behind the wheel, but women behind business success and corporate triumphs. We then created a short, simple Twitter campaign. Our tweets were specifically created to cause people to stop and read them. We wanted people to think “Wait, did Audi Ireland just say women drivers are crap?” We wanted people to do this because in normal everyday life they probably see this message all the time but ignore it. But coming from a brand like Audi they’d surely take notice. And notice they did. But they also clicked on the links. And they read the stories. And when they figured out what we had done they let us know they liked what we had done.

The Brief

Our goal was to create awareness of a meme and stereotype that has gained new life via social channels. The propagation of this kind of thinking is not only damaging to women drivers but just women. We wanted people to start noticing this meme and to stop letting it pass off without comment. We want people to take back #WomenDrivers and start using it as a positive remark.

Execution

We posted 6 tweets from the @AudiIreland Twitter account. The tweets were spaced out over 3 days from April 27th – 29th. We also tweeted a short video explaining why Audi was doing this and asking people to get involved. In the original plan for this campaign, we were not going to tweet an explanatory video until enough time had passed to give enough controversy to the original tweets. However, the client requested we put out the video on April 29th.

Action/Business Impact: Audi Ireland saw a - 211% growth in its Twitter impressions for the period. - 76% growth in mentions for the period. - 162% growth in profile views for the period. - +6m estimated reach of the campaign on Twitter through our campaign and follow up articles from publications such as o The Telegraph o Inc Magazine o Adfreak o Design Taxi o The Mirror o Marketingland.com - PR Value (Ireland only) €76,728 Budget - €200

The Strategy

Our strategy was simple enough. Bait and switch. Grab people’s attention by saying something controversial. Something that would cause them to stop and reread the post, just to be sure the post said what they thought it did. Once we had their attention we drove them to a positive article that proved the stereotype to be bogus. We believed that by doing this we could create conversation online. If we could show how ridiculous the meme is, then people would take notice. And perhaps the next time they saw the meme from a person, they might take that person to task about it. We also created a listed of influential people in Ireland. Not just women, but people from all walks of life. We reached out to these people on social as well as through targeted media drops to create awareness and encourage them to spread the message.