Title	THE DAY-AFTER-WOMEN'S-DAY NEWSPAPERS
Brand	RAPARIGAS DA BOLA
Product/Service	RAPARIGAS DA BOLA
Category	A01. Glass
Entrant	HAVAS Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Idea Creation	HAVAS Lisbon, PORTUGAL

Name	Company	Position
Paulo Pinto	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Executive Creative Director
José Vieira	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Creative Director
Margarida Pedreira	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Digital Creative Director
Bernardo Tavares	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Copywriter
Alexandre Meneses	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Art Director
Ana Torres	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Media Director
Sérgio Resende	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Account Director
Nuno Nascimento	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Art Finalist
Pedro Silva	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Production Director
António Fernandes	Havas Worldwide Portugal	Graphic Production Director

Why is this work relevant for Glass: The Award for Change

A newspaper is made up of photos, articles, opinions, graphics, analysis, data, and other types of information, but by choosing this specific date to launch de idea and by highlight the deep-rooted gender inequity that exists in sports coverage, the way we did, the only think people can see is that it's time to change. This is a tool with which to fight for fairer visibility for female athletes, and it also resulted in an invite for one of Raparigas da Bola members to write about gender equality in the biggest Portugal's sport newspaper.

Background

´Raparigas da Bola` (English translation: Ball Girls) is an advocacy group that fights to give more visibility to women in sports. When it comes to sports media coverage, the difference between the coverage that male athletes get and females athletes receive is even more blatant. In Portugal, this gap is even wider. Take a look at any of Portugal's main sports newspapers and you’ll quickly notice it. There are 3 important sport newspapers in Portugal, with huge audiences that predominantly focus on male athletes. Raparigas da Bola wanted a campaign to raise awareness about the deep-rooted inequity that exists in sports coverage.

Describe the cultural / social / political climate in your region and the significance of your campaign within this context

Portugal is a small country with 10 million inhabitants, and a country that lives by old values. Sexism, unfortunately, is ingrained in Portuguese culture. Only ⅓ of Portugal’s professional athletes are women. Despite that, in the last european indoor athletics championships, Portugal achieved its best result ever, winning 3 gold medals, ⅔ of which were won by female athletes. Historically speaking, Portugal’s female athletes are high achievers. And currently, things are no different: . The world’s best female futsal goalkeeper is from Portugal . Portugal has the 2nd best futsal female national team of Europe . Portugal’s national hockey team came 2nd in the last European championship . Portugal’s only Olympic medalist in 2016 was a woman: Telma Monteiro And even with so many reasons to be proud of their female athletes, the media doesn’t give them the coverage they deserve. Just recently, a newspaper named the female football player Ana Borges “Man of the Match”. And a few days later the coach of a soccer team said that football belongs to men, in a slight aimed at a female commentator.

Describe the creative idea

With the media spotlight on women on 8th march (International Women’s Day), then what better day than the 9th march to draw attention to the deep-rooted inequity that exists in sports coverage, everyday. We needed a simple, powerfull, and eye-catching execution to turn the news of the day into a tool with which to fight for fairer visibility for female athletes. That's why we turned the news of 9th, published by the Portugal's top 3 sports newspapers, into 3 infographic publications, highlighting the imbalance of media exposure between men and women in sport.

Describe the strategy

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this campaign, one infographic really was worth a thousand words. We focused on one single item of data (the athlete’s gender) and turned three newspapers into 3 iconic infographics, essentially summarising data over 94 pages into 2 block items: male-athlete coverage and female-athlete coverage. By turning our attention to Portugal’s top 3, tier-one, sports newspapers, and summarizing the information in them into gender-based data, we distinctly highlighted the blatant, disproportionate coverage of male athletes, and furthered the movement to break this cycle, and give more coverage to women athletes. The combination of data, design, and courage, resulted in a tool with which people were able to use to fight for fairer visibility for female athletes.

Describe the execution

In the early hours of the 9th March we digitized Portugal’s top 3 sports newspapers, replacing text and photos with two-tone block colours, illustrating the imbalance of coverage between male and female athletes. With a color assigned to each gender, the final infographics visually summed up the blatant bias given to male athletes, and in stark contrast to women’s coverage, with only a few squares sparsely dotted about the publications. In order to get traction on social media, we partnered with 50 athletes who helped to amplify the campaign with their teammates and colleagues, spreading the campaign on social media with the hashtag #ElasTambémJogam (#WomenAlsoPlay). From just 30 copies of the newspapers, we were able to reach an audience 52x larger than Portugal’s biggest sports newspaper.

Describe the results / impact

With zero investment, including in media, but with a powerful execution, the campaign was able to: . reach 52x more people than Portugal’s biggest sports newspaper; . secure participation from more than 150 athletes to help spread the campaign; . impact more than 32 countries; . get traction on major news platforms around the globe; . become the topic of the day on 9th March . put pressure on sports newspapers to increase coverage of female athletes, reaching around a 100% increase in said coverage just one week after the campaign was run. As a direct result of the campaign, one of the members of Raparigas da Bola was invited to write about gender equality in Portugal’s biggest sports newspaper.