When Emmy-winning photographer and director Lauren Greenfield cofounded Girl Culture Films, a production company representing female-identifying and non-binary directors, she reached out about collaborating.
We wrote case studies for Girl Culture’s website that highlighted pivotal projects, composed press releases, and wrote copy and contributed editorial strategy for one of the company’s early pitch decks to a major telecom. Below, a look at the case studies…
Case Study: ‘Equality Can’t Wait’ for Pivotal Ventures x R/GA
Natasha Lyonne’s ‘Equality Can’t Wait’ Tackles a ‘Profound Absurdity’ With Comedy
When the World Economic Forum issued its annual Global Gender Gap Report in 2019, there was relatively good news for residents of countries like France and Iceland, which are on track to close the gender gap in 22 and 23 years, respectively. The outlook was far dimmer, however, for the United States: “At current trends, the U.S. will take 208 years to close its gender gap,” noted the report. “That’s roughly three lifetimes.”
That alarming statistic inspired Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures company to partner with R/GA on a campaign with an urgent message: “Equality Can’t Wait.” But this would not be your standard PSA—the plan was to enlist famous performers for a series of videos that harnessed the turn-telling power of comedy.
AJ Hassan, VP, executive creative director at R/GA, brought Lauren Greenfield on as a creative director, and together they developed the concept. Lauren suggested a comedian direct the spots—specifically, Emmy-nominated actor, writer, director, and producer Natasha Lyonne. Known equally for her comic prowess and for telling it like it is, Lyonne was the ideal person to direct a campaign that needed to land jokes and deliver a bracing reality check.
Lauren went straight to the source to secure Lyonne’s participation, taking advantage of a fateful advertising event in New York City they were both attending to deliver her pitch. “I chased her down,” says Lauren. When she explained she had a directing project she’d be perfect for, Natasha invited Lauren to join her for her car ride home to discuss the details. And just things flowed from there.
“The statistics are abysmal,” Lyonne told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview about why she was eager to do the campaign. “The best entry point to tackle an absurdity this profound is to come at it sideways, through comedy, because what else can you do?”
Attaching Natasha to the project proved pivotal on multiple fronts. She brought in a writer to help punch up the copy, as well as revising the scripts together with AJ. “I wanted to create a buoyancy as an antidote to the depressing facts—something that would lift us up, activate, unify, and motivate rather than [make us want to] give up under the weight,” Natasha told THR.
She also reached out to her network, ultimately expanding the campaign’s cast to include 15 A-list performers. “She was able to bring in an incredible group of comedians,” says Lauren, including Maya Rudolph, Sarah Silverman, John Mulaney, Margaret Cho, and “Broad City” stars Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. “Natasha is so beloved in the comedy world and has so may strong relationships, people wanted to participate because of her.”
The launch campaign, “208 Years, No Joke,” generated 80 million views, 946,000 engagements, and more than a little commentary. The campaign,wrote Bust magazine, “makes you kind of want to laugh even when you're crying because we ARE 208 YEARS AWAY FROM TRUE GENDER EQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES.”
Case Study: K-Y for Havas New York
‘The Pleasure Is Mine’: A Daring Message of Empowerment
The three-part docu-series “The Pleasure Is Mine” was inspired by a shocking insight: Through research, K-Y discovered that 61% of women tend to put their own needs and pleasure behind their partners', while 59% of women feel it's normal to experience some pain or discomfort during sex. What if K-Y, a leader in sexual well-being and intimacy, created content that would free women to talk openly about sex and feel entitled to ask for what they want?
A female-led team at K-Y’s agency, Havas New York, approached Girl Culture Films, where Lauren Greenfield immediately thought of director Emmy-winning Amy Berg. “Amy had just done This Is Personal, a film about the Women’s March, and was thinking a lot about intersectionality,” explains Lauren. “I knew she’d be perfect for this project. She’s such an amazing documentarian, and she’s not afraid to ask tough questions.”
With Amy at the helm, the project quickly took shape. She refined the concept with a storyteller’s eye, bringing in a certified sex therapist to facilitate group-therapy-style discussions about the very real roadblocks to sexual fulfillment. The participants would represent the world in all of its diversity: different ages, body types, sexual identities, and ethnicities. The conversations would be real, the chemistry among the women palpable, the candor vivid, relatable, and refreshing. Taboos would be broken, and a new future would begin.
During the 2016 presidential election, Amy noted in an interview about the docu-series, the conversation was about women being disrespected. “Locker-room talk became such an important narrative, and then the Women’s March stepped onto the stage and allowed women to support each other and be empowered by their presence,” she said. “I was documenting the women’s movement the past couple of years and … seeing how much comes from being vocal about things that have been taboo for years, such as sex. I was watching women being able to stick up for what they didn’t want. So when this job came, I thought it would be interesting to talk about what women do want and how to express their power. I thought through a group setting there would be something interesting that would happen in the room.”
“The Pleasure Is Mine” kicked off with an event as unconventional as the campaign itself: a red-carpet film premiere at the Paley Center in New York, where guests were treated to sensual hors d’oeuvres like, gift bags with pink candles emblazoned with the words “The pleasure is mine”—the tagline doubles as a statement of empowerment—and product samples. There was even a Q&A with Amy and Lauren, just like at a film festival. “It was a fun different way to premiere a commercial,” says Lauren.
“The Pleasure Is Mine” was the first content produced for K-Y’s “Get What You Want” campaign initiative, and as the brand has noted, “It started the conversation, and countless women are continuing it.”
Case Study: ‘Equality Can’t Wait’ for Pivotal Ventures x R/GA
Case Study: #LikeAGirl for Always / Leo BurnettThe ‘Social Experiment’ That Sparked a Movement
Why is it considered an insult to do things #LikeAGirl? Collaborating with Leo Burnett Chicago, Lauren Greenfield explored the question for Always with a 2014 campaign that went viral, broke barriers, won numerous awards, and blossomed into a movement whose influence can be felt to this day.
The idea arose out of a multi-team effort across Leo Burnett Toronto, London, and Chicago. A series of brainstorming sessions surfaced a phrase—“like a girl”—that caught the attention of Judy John, then Leo Burnett chief creative officer, North America and CEO Canada. Research conducted for Always had noted the sharp drop in confidence that girls experience in adolescence. Part of what drives that plummet in self-esteem are the perceptions around how girls should behave, what’s appropriate, and how their very gender is a liability.
The phrase “like a girl” encapsulated those issues and provided a talking point for what would become a provocative campaign. As Judy told Ad Age, the premise was, “Why can’t it be inspiring? Why can’t it be a positive thing?”
Finding the Right Woman for the Job
She and A.J. Hassan, who at the time was VP and creative director at Leo Burnett Worldwide, developed the premise, deciding that a social experiment was the best way to bring it to life. “We believed that if we asked adult women and men to show us what it looks like to do things like a girl, the insult would come out,” says A.J., “but that young, uninhibited girls would give it their all.”
The agency then reached out to Lauren to direct the spot. “That was probably the most important decision we made,” Judy said in an interview with Contagious.com. “The team and I are big fans of her work. … She captures girls in such a real way and with a sensitive hand. She brings the humanity of what girls go through to life.”
Lauren recalls being on a project in China at the time and getting the boards, which bore her photo and the words “Direct Like a Girl.” “I was intrigued by what they wanted to do,” says Lauren, whose own work exploring girl culture dates back to the 1990s. The agency was considering using a split-screen method, but knowing that the spot wouldn’t resonate if it felt staged, Lauren went in a different direction, asking: “How do we make the experiment real?”
Developing #LikeAGirl
What followed was an unconventional approach to what everyone involved understood to be an unconventional campaign. “I started what they would call a casting process, but it was really a large control group to do the study,” Lauren explains. “I was able to ask hundreds of boys and girls and men and women what the words ‘like a girl’ meant.” To protect the authenticity of the exploration, which she filmed, she and her team never revealed the answers they were looking for. Lauren intentionally asked misleading questions like, “What’s it like to walk like your grandpa?” or “Can you crawl like a baby?” Then she asked her subjects to “run like a girl.”
“It was incredible in terms of the number of people making fun of going things like a girl,” she recalls. “Some were conscious of what they were doing and thought it was terrible but did it anyway.”
Afterward, she, Judy, and A.J. spent 16 hours in a room reviewing the tapes and picking the people who would ultimately be in the spot. “I didn’t do a callback because I didn’t want to break the spontaneity,” says Lauren. On shoot day, the studio was set up with one background, the same for everyone, so that each person would be walking into a “a blank-slate world,” she says. Cinematographer David Morrison lit everyone beautifully to give the spot polish without sacrificing authenticity. And there were props on hand for people to act out how to throw or bat like a girl.
Lauren used an interrotron so she could talk to the talent and maintain a sense of casual intimacy, and the set was arranged so that observers were not visible. It felt like it was just Lauren and her subjects. “It was a magical shoot because people showed their stereotype of what the words ‘like a girl’ meant, but then they had a moment to reflect on it,” she says. “They were making this emotional realization in real time.”
A Viral Sensation
#LikeAGirl premiered as a three-minute spot on the Always YouTube channel and was emailed to thought leaders and feminists, a grassroots approach that helped it go viral. When Leo Burnett and P&G saw the response, they put a media buy against it and eventually ordered a 60-second cut that aired during the Super Bowl—marking the first time an ad for feminine protection appeared on advertising’s biggest day.
#LikeAGirl went on to win an armload of awards, including an Emmy, 14 Cannes Lions (including the Titanium Lion), seven CLIO awards, and eight pencils at the D&AD Awards. It also earned Lauren the #1 Director/Most Awarded Director honor from Ad Age (making her the first woman to top this list), and Best in Show at the AICP Awards. The spot has since become part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
Notably, #LikeAGirl was created by a team almost entirely made up of women. “That’s a rarity in corporate America, where men traditionally have occupied most of the top decision-making positions at many companies selling goods to women, leading to some un-relatable ads and difficult-to-use products,” noted HuffPost in a 2015 feature on the spot.
“The campaign changed the meaning of the words ‘like a girl,’” notes Lauren. “People took it on as a rallying cry and a point of pride.” Besides generating attention and winning awards, the campaign also sold product. “That was one of the exciting developments that had big reverberations in the industry,” says Lauren. “People would buy a product because they were aligned with the values.”
Next Project ->