TVC: Always - #LikeAGirl
By Malay Desai From: Leo Burnett Chicago/London/Toronto P&G’s sanitary pad brand’s campaign was based on a social experiment that asked a cross-section of people to act out phrases such as ‘run like a girl’ and ‘fight like a girl.’ Their reaction was to make exaggerated movements and many expressions that denoted negativity. The film then proceeded to ask just a group of young girls to do the same, which they do with complete normalcy and some with confidence and positivity. ‘Let’s make #Likeagirl’ mean amazing things,’ the copy toward the close reads. The hashtag and other parts of the campaign were executed on multiple media. Why we Like? To deviate from our regular reactions to what’s hot on the global/local advertising scene, we have this week a film from last year, a campaign rather that hit ‘puberty’ correctly. Wait, let me explain. P&G, like it has for its brands such as Pantene and Whisper here, based yet another all-round effort on a research finding – that more than half the surveyed girls claimed to experience a drop in confidence at puberty. But the brilliance of this doesn't lie in that insight, it lies in making a social experiment around it, and in turn using it as a focal point to propel the campaign forward. Noted woman film-maker Lauren Greenfield (how many of them do we have here?) adds to the impact when she asks real people – men, women to enact phrases which end with ‘…like a girl.’ Their responses, of course varying with different age-groups, provide an honest reflection of how we are socially wired to mean ‘girls do this funnily’ when we say ‘like a girl.’ The second half of the film, where young and adolescent girls display purpose and power, devoid of hardwired-ness is heartening – for parents. And parents, especially mothers, are the buyers of the product; they’d be proud buyers after this campaign. The film seamlessly shifts from a conversation about looks to one about attitude. Many MNC brands, especially Pantene and Nike have been on this line while Dove undoubtedly has been the leader in dishing out conversation-led, insightful campaigns. Back home, the only remarkable effort that comes to mind is last year’s #VogueEmpower film starring Madhuri Dixit, which um, uncannily said similar things to this June 2014 film. Will our brands, especially those catering to a single gender (and those not owned by multinationals) also show signs of maturity or will throw up teeny-bopper mistakes? (To watch the film typehttp://bit.ly/ViewTubeMar2in your browser - or scan this code from your smartphone or tablet) Social Newsfeed Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe ‘The Dress’ you must not care about ..unless you work for Buzzfeed that is. Friday morning, Tumblr users hit upon a post by a user wondering what colour a dress was – white and gold or blue and black. It could have been just another thread but the internet, wayward as the beast is, decided to make it a phenomenally shared post. We are told Buzzfeed picked it up first (after the post hit high traffic on Tumblr that is), provided the critical ‘who said what’ details and from there the dress set off on other networks. An online retailer sold a record number by evening, higher than its Black Friday sale; WIRED wrote a detailed piece decoding the science of human colour perception; Tweeters obviously turned up their noses but helped in the trend nevertheless and various other time-wasters among us debated this as if, you know, Taj Mahal was on fire or something. My only take on this coincides with that of @thetweetofGod: ‘Guys, you do know that ocean levels rose four inches in two years, right?’ YepMe likes this Can Facebook prevent suicide? There have been times when the big F has, in a small way, contributed to pulling down someone’s self-esteem and in other cases, been the medium of some people who’ve gone on to kill themselves. Now, it seems apna Zuck is keen to balance the karma meter as he’s rolled out a set of new tools aimed at ‘preventing suicide.’ The network now senses when you put up a depressed status up or sound morose, and like most other things, it gets this information from your Facebook friend. ‘Hi Xyz, a friend thinks you might be going through something difficult and asked us to look at your recent post,’ it tells you, thankfully in private. You can then opt to ‘talk to someone’ or get tips and support, with FB having tied up with organisations such as Forefront and National Suicide Prevention Helpline. I have no jokes to crack here, and I hope Zuck’s sincere effort, even though it sounds bizarre, drives the on-the-edge users back to a sane zone. Veerufrom Sholay likes this Why you must lap up Reddit India too AND in-keeping with my occasional habit of telling you all of amazingly productive/fun/bizarre social networks that could change your life, I present to you Reddit India. A ‘sub’ i.e. a section of Reddit, a thread-based social/news site (found in SF in 2005, yawn!) that’s devoted to India has been keeping me tuned to anything important and everything cool going about the social webs and the outside world. The Reddit India sub, more so on the mobile app ‘Reddit is Fun’, is super-easy to sift through – and you don't need registration/membership/clicking on evil T&C links –and presents in neat threads the conversations that are up-voted by users. AMA, or Ask Me Anything, which I mentioned here when Priyanka Chopra did it, is a great way to know a celebrity/thinker/doer inside out. The other ‘news’ updates too present both sides of the Modi story. Go now, and read the very interesting AMA with singer Meiyang Chang. 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