What These Three Brands Can Teach You About Female Empowerment And Social Video Engagement In Advertising
As Hillary Clinton, the first potential female US president, is about to take charge of the free world and the Rio 2016 Olympics is in full force around the world — it’s only right we make an all female, all girl power post about women, sport and empowerment.
Female empowerment was recently used to create three adverts each belonging to Always, Bodyform and Nike who have used the excitement for the Olympics to create a feminism approach to advertise their brands. All three adverts brought a strong female power message but which one had the largest impact on social media?
Firstly, Bodyform — one of the UK’s leading feminine protection brands. The advert titled “blood” provides a brutal, honest and realistic perception of women, periods and female participation in sport. By using a bold yet realistic tagline, “women bleed in sport all the time, but it doesn’t hold them back? Why should periods be any different?” proposes a clear nod towards the current Olympic games and an attempt to break the taboo of red blood and periods. The advert shows strong visual images of a female footballer being viciously tackled, to a boxer taking several punches to her face are gruesome — yet ultimately each female continues playing the sport — despite the red blood.
The advert’s social impact was overwhelmingly positive — especially on Twitter. Bodyform’s main twitter account has a rather small 3,349 followers but surprisingly one tweet of the advert caused a social media uprising. One tweet of the advert gained 3,415 retweets and 7,329 likes two months after it made it’s debut (as of late July 2016). The 102% retweet engagement figure and 219% like engagement figure (as a % of Bodyform’s total Twitter follower count) speaks volumes. What is notable about the social impact on this platform was that the advert was retweeted by a YouTube influencer, “Andrea Russett” who has more than 2.2 million Twitter followers, the majority of which are female. When a snippet of the video was tweeted again by Bodyform, it only caused a 20% and 30% retweet and like engagement figure, respectively. This insight shows the impact of a social influencer — by simply acknowledging the advert it created a booming impact on social media.
Although Bodyform gained great praise for honest approach to the subject — there were some outspoken critics who argued against the ‘shock tactics’ used by the company. I think its clear if it was not for the creative shock tactics Bodyform applied, the campaign would not have had the impact it had.
Secondly, Nike — a multi billion dollar sports brand introduced an advert showing empowered Indian women in sports. The advert showed them engaging in sports such as basketball, boxing, football and their national favourite, cricket. The bright colours alongside the catchy #dadading theme tune (by GENER8ION) bring together Indian culture alongside breaking the barrier for sportswomen in India — proving women can play in heavily male dominated sports.
It was a shock to find that only one of Nike’s Twitter accounts, having analysed all of its accounts across the main social video platforms, posted the social ad — Nike Women. Although the account has over 400,000 followers, the likes and retweets were quite low with 0.12% and 0.07% of followers engaging with the tweet. Nike has the ability to engage with a large following with its main Nike account in the capacity to reach over 6 million people on its own — but it failed on the majority of its social media platforms to acknowledge the advert.
On the other hand Nike’s Olympics adverts — notably male dominated — have been consistently mentioned, tweeted and retweeted throughout Nike’s various social media platforms. Does this not suggest an unfair, unequal and discriminatory disadvantage to the whole equal gender campaign? — Maybe.
Lastly, Always — a brand for feminine hygiene launched an advert for their campaign #LikeAGirl. It was considered to be an attempt to break away from negative connotations that surround “doing something like a girl” and empower young women into sports before their gender norms crush their self-esteem and motivation. The advert focuses on realism by using young girls with athletic dreams. The young females from different areas of the world — clearly motioned towards the current Olympic games — are seen playing various sports from Basketball to Rugby. The young girls are seen providing words of encouragement — telling girls not to quit and attempting to boost confidence and self-esteem.
The consistent use of the hashtag #LikeAGirl on every tweet and various snippets of the advert continuously promoted on its Twitter account proved a strong engagement percentage of 6.79% in retweets and 14.1% in likes. Furthermore, Always was the only brand out of its competitors to use all formats of social media with 50% of their Instagram followers viewing their post. The continuous use of video content across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube proved Always to be the most socially engaging video out of all three brands mentioned.
Whilst Always had an overall positive response it was described by a few as ‘patronising’ in that a woman’s self-worth should not be dictated to them by advertisers — who ultimately want to sell a product. In my opinion, in a society where women are still fighting for equality in many realms of life — a video expressing feminism should be celebrated.
It is clear the social engagement these adverts have had on social media have differed greatly. Nike’s #dadading video had colours, culture and a catchy pop song, but it performed poorly when it came to social video engagement due to it’s distribution strategy. The advert was tweeted about once and uploaded to YouTube but was missing on major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Vine. On the other hand, Always has proven to be the most consistent in social engagement by using all social platforms to promote their product and campaign. Bodyform proved to have the most impressive engagement figures and indicated how significant and effective a social influencer can be when promoting a campaign.
Ultimately, all three brands have clearly highlighted one common theme — that women can play sports — and compete.
