Cannes Contenders 2017: Mediacom

As we near the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Campaign India continues with its 'Cannes Contender' series.

 

The premise is:

 

How much time really does a Cannes juror get to understand a case or piece of work s/he hasn't come across before?

 

Too little. It's up to us to help them get acquainted with the good work prior. We present here entries from Indian/South Asian agencies that their creators believe will be in contention for Lions at the 2017 International Festival of Creativity, Cannes.  

 

Mediacom has one such contender.

 

Whisper - Like A Girl

Around the world, girls grow up listening to phrases like, ‘you throw/run/kick/fight like a girl’. These are not friendly comments, they are intended to insult and intimidate. Most girls laugh them off – until they reach puberty. During puberty a girl’s confidence plummets. It rarely fully returns, thereby impacting her future potential as an adult woman.

 

Girls feel pressurised to conform to unrealistic, biased norms set by society. Gender inequality is at the center of all constraints. Feeling inferior or weak is a dominating thought.

 

Whisper believes that ‘Like a Girl’ should represent the strength, talent, character and downright amazing-ness of every girl.

 

In the wake of India’s success at the 2016 Olympics, the phrase ‘Like A Girl’ was going through a positive transition and had ensued heartening conversations such as - “They fought #LikeAGirl” or “They played #LikeAGirl”, but there was still a long way to go before every girl could do things ‘Like A Girl’ and Be Proud of it. Whisper brought #LikeAGirl to India with a local spin, urging girls to be “LikeAGirl&Proud”.

 

Working with Nielsen, a newsworthy story around the idea how #LikeAGirl is used as an insult was created and released in media. It was reinforced by celebrity backers of our campaign.

 

Olympic champions talked to media about how they had never let the phrase ‘LikeAGirl’ stop them from achieving their dreams. 


 

On TV, videos featuring young TV stars talking about what ‘LikeAGirl’ means to them and how they achieved amazing things. We did in-show integrations leveraging Olympic champions. We took the message straight to our target audience by recruitingcollege girls as campus advocates, to create word of mouth across cities.

 

The results were phenomenal.