Building a global campaign on gender equality
Style meets substance in this star-studded awareness and action campaign on gender inequality.
In 2014, with the goal of engaging a broader audience in the conversation around the data outlook of gender inequality worldwide, we partnered with the innovative creative firm Droga5 to inspire a new generation of change makers. Timed with the release of NoNo Ceilings’ The Full Participation Report and NoCeilings.org No Ceilings launched a broad public awareness effort, “Not There,” on International Women’s Day 2015. The campaign was meant to symbolically show that we are ‘not there’ yet on issues of gender equality, and to drive viewers to learn the facts and take action.
No Ceilings and Droga5 reached out to a wide variety of media companies, brands, celebrities, and influencers to invite them to join us on March 8, International Women’s Day, to remove symbolically and temporarily images of women from traditional media in a series of key physical locations – billboards, bus shelters, etc. – in New York City, and on social media channels.
The images were replaced with the URL not-there.org, driving visitors to a video featuring the voices of celebrities including Amy Poehler, Padma Lakshmi, Jenny Slate, Cameron Diaz, and more as they highlighted key data from the report showing we are “not there” yet on gender equality.
WATCH “NOT THERE YET” ON YOUTUBE
Outcomes:
On March 8 2015, #NotThere trended nationally on Twitter. An average of 132 people per minute accessed Not-There.org that day; there were 283 million impressions on Twitter alone, over 71 times the delivery we anticipated.
As of January 1, 2017, the “Not There” video has been viewed more than 610,000 times.
The ingenuity and scope of the Not There campaign were covered by the New York Times on the eve of International Women’s Day. In the piece, “‘Not There’ Campaign Removes Women From Ads for International Women’s Day,” they note:
“Women across New York had vanished.
Rosie the Riveter disappeared from her iconic poster in a bus shelter. Serena Williams faded from a giant Beats billboard in Times Square. Gone was Scarlett Johansson from the March cover of Condé Nast’s W magazine.
On Sunday, the Clinton Foundation co-opted some 40 existing advertisements, posters and other media, cutting out the women as part of a campaign to call attention to gender inequality. The stunt, the work of the advertising agency Droga5, was intended to drive online traffic to a report by the foundation’s No Ceilings initiative on the status of women and girls across the globe.”
It was also covered by the leader in advertising, AdAge, in a story entitled, “Clinton Foundation Ad Campaign Erases Women From Billboards, Conde Nast Magazines.” They note how “Marketers and Media Join 'Not There' Push for Women's Rights” and discuss the broad array of brands who partnered with No Ceilings and the Clinton Foundation for the campaign. AdWeek detailed the enormous scope of the project overall.
Major media partners were engaged and supported the effort – including Conde Nast (see integrations for Vogue, Glamour, Teen Vogue and Brides – all of whom temporarily removed women from the cover of their print magazines and replaced it with www.not-there.org as part of the campaign). Refinery29, Mashable, IntoTheGloss. iHeartMedia removed women’s voices from well-known songs on 186 of its radio stations nationwide in ads that featured Ryan Seacrest.
You could also see exclusive content via Snapchat’s then newly launched “Discover” platform to watch Secretary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton’s exclusive International Women’s Day message encouraging everyone to learn the facts and take action.