Brands Make a Stand for International Women’s Day

What would a world without women be like? On Sunday 8 March consumers got a glimpse as agency Droga5 launched a unique execution to promote gender equality across the media landscape.

Coinciding with International Women’s Day, the campaign saw a multitude of brands and NGOs come together for the NOT-THERE initiative, co-ordinated with the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project. The unique concept saw images of actresses, athletes and celebrities removed from ads to raise awareness that women are “not there” yet on issues concerning gender equality.

For a full day on Sunday ads for brands including Under Armor, H&M and Kate Spade New York were eerily altered to promote the point leaving the media landscape devoid of femininity and once at the NOT-THERE.org website, visitors were greeted by the voices of Amy Poehler, Cameron Diaz, Jenny Slate, Padma Lakshmi, and Sienna Miller, in a sharable video [below] to inspire Americans to learn the facts and inspire action.

Meanwhile in London, agency adam&eveDDB has made its own stand and showed support for the cause by temporarily changing its name to eve&adamDDB.

DDB also launched a campaign, called Better By Half, a commitment to help promote gender equality at within the agency and throughout the wider advertising industry.

Goodbye adam&eveDDB, Hello eve&adamDDB: http://t.co/hy9gfF0HJw @womensday #InternationalWomensDay #MakeItHappen pic.twitter.com/0XTel6sNqB
— eve&adamDDB (@aandeddb) March 6, 2015

Better By Half was created as a result of DDB Worldwide’s International Women's Day campaign around Empower in 2014. The Empower website, created by DDB Chicago, features photos of women from across the DDB Network and tweets from female employees on Twitter answering the question, “What empowers you?”

Better By Half will bring men and women together, at every level, to discuss and find opportunities to improve gender balance. Research shows that the better the gender balance in leadership positions, the better the company’s performance.

“We have to stop thinking of gender balance as a women’s issue,” explains Mark O’Brien, president of DDB North America. “Since gender balance benefits everyone, both men and women need to be part of the conversation. We will have representatives on the Better By Half Council from our offices in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. With this launch, our goal is to lead the way in a dialogue that is intended to identify and remove the obstacles that lead to gender imbalance, especially at the more senior levels of management.”

The Council will tackle today’s hot topics when it comes to gender in the workplace, including: career development, mentor programmes for women, increasing the number of women in leadership positions, developing a network for overcoming women’s challenges, and joining the conversation at industry events and with industry organisations, among many others.