2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

The general perception of global gender inequality is that, while it’s still not perfect, it’s a lot better than it was. As such, it has fallen off the off the list of major concerns and challenges for many people, especially in the developed world. Gallup conducts monthly polls in the US covering the topic of most important problems facing the country. Issues like terrorism, immigration, poverty and racism feature regularly – gender inequality doesn’t even make the list anymore. We needed to show people that gender inequality still exists, in the developing and the developed world, and is much more of an issue than many people realise. We needed to show that it exists in a number of forms and demonstrate that easily and indisputably. And we needed to do all this to raise the profile of UN Women, both internationally and within the UN itself, so that they could achieve their annual fundraising targets for the first time. The Google autocomplete function helped us do all that and more. Typing phrases like ‘women should’ in the Google search bar produced shockingly sexist autocomplete suggestions like ‘women should be slaves,’ ‘women need to be controlled’ and ‘women shouldn’t have rights.’ We created a series of simple yet powerful visuals, featuring women of different ethnicities being silenced by the autocomplete boxes and negative sentiments. It was visually arresting and iconic, yet simple enough for anyone to understand. The campaign went viral in every sense of the word, with millions of people sharing the images across social media and joining the debate. It became Adweek's Most Shared Ad of 2013, the Ad Council's Social Good Campaign of 2013 and was named The World's Most Successful Ad for Good Causes by the 2014 Gunn Report (selected out of 854 campaigns from 673 advertisers in 71 countries). It generated 1.3 billion media impressions and 335 million Twitter impressions as a worldwide conversation about UN Women and gender inequality took place, raising the profile of both the organization and the issue. 729 online news media articles covering the campaign were published, with a total PR value of $7,107,750. And after two years of declining donations and being unable to meet their targets, UN Women recorded a 32.5% increase in donations in 2013 over 2012, exceeding their annual target for the first time.