At puberty, girls’ confidence plummets, in part because society limits girls to stereotypes. These subtle limits are even found on phones.
Girls send over a billion emojis every day, but do emojis represent them? In a recorded social experiment with real girls, Always learned that the answer is overwhelmingly “no”.
Always #LikeAGirl rallied girls all over the world to share their ideas for new emojis with broader appeal, reflecting real girls. As ideas poured in via social media, Always responded in real time with custom-designed emojis. All ideas – from wrestlers to paleontologists to rock stars – were shared with the Unicode Consortium at their request, as they work towards the next emoji update, affecting phones all over Earth.
In the end, the idea is bigger than emojis, which illustrate a broader issue. It’s about sparking an important conversation, challenging stereotypes, listening to girls and keeping them confident by creating.
Execution
After launch, the team reached out broadly to the media, leveraging the video, another behind-the-scenes video with director Lucy Walker, survey data, and ongoing media chatter around emojis. Our efforts bolstered the campaign credibility and kept news value high for more than four weeks.
We also engaged digital and cultural influencers that resonated with young girls and encouraged the girls to create and share their own engaging content.
When First Lady Michelle Obama asked to be a part of the #LikeAGirl conversation, we partnered with her Let Girls Learn initiative for an experiential event to empower girls on International Women’s Day in Washington, D.C.
OUTCOMES/AWARENESS
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KNOWLEDGE/CONSIDERATION
--1.5 billion earned media impressions with coverage in nearly every targeted publication, and notable placements in Mashable, CNN.com, Huffington Post, Refinery29 and Parade.com.
--50 million social impressions from #LikeAGirl influencers, including 8 million Twitter impressions and 30 million on Instagram
--91% positive sentiment across social channels
OUTPUTS/BUSINESS RESULTS
--30 million video views and thousands of girls all over the world demanding change
--Attention from top-tier celebrity and cultural influencers, including tweets from actor/activist Emma Watson, media mogul Arianna Huffington, an invitation to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and even one of the most influential women in the world, First Lady Michelle Obama.
--No reaction to our rally for girl emojis was more thrilling than the response from the Unicode Consortium, the emoji gatekeepers, asking Always to pass along the girls’ ideas for new emojis.
The Situation
The Always #LikeAGirl Girl Emojis campaign rallied girls around the world through an online film, social media, earned media and influencer efforts to request the Unicode Consortium-the gatekeepers of emojis—to consider new girl emojis that reflect a broader array of the amazing things girls can do using #LikeAGirl. Always encouraged girls to share their incredible ideas – from a girl wrestler and a chemist, to a detective and a drummer –then collected them in real time to share with the Consortium. Our powerful campaign was about challenging stereotypes and creating change, building on the Unstoppable movement started in Summer 2015.
The Strategy
Always conducted multiple surveys to better understand girls’ confidence at puberty. The cornerstone for the #LikeAGirl campaign is that at puberty 56% of girls experience a severe drop in confidence and many never fully recover. Additionally, 72% of girls feel society limits them, which contributes to this confidence drop.
The primary target audience--girls ages 16-24.
The secondary target--mothers of preteen girls.
As we explored factors contributing to girls feeling limited, we discovered that girls are confronted with a stifling narrative in a language they use daily: emojis. While subtle, emojis reflect society’s bias against girls. And with 1 billion emojis texted every day, the subject resonated with both target groups.
The emojis issue was an ideal example of a credible, next-level conversation communicating tangible action that Always wanted to define its #LikeAGirl strategy going forward.
We explored the emoji bias in a social experiment, through interviews with girls' whose confidence