Campaign Background

MATCH International Women’s Fund, a not-for-profit that provides grants to grassroots organizations around the world, suffers from low awareness. The organization wanted to shock Canadians into action to change the grave realities women face around the world. International Women’s Day (IWD) was a timely anchor to kick this off, but just one aspect in a larger yearlong campaign. The organization and agency The Colony Project simply used this day as a catalyst in starting a conversation about women’s rights.

The Goal

-Raise awareness for The MATCH Fund/women’s rights work it supports
-Create a disruptive message to grab attention about global women issues
-Kick-start a yearlong conversation about global women’s issues, highlighting MATCH’s work

Communications Targets

-Nine pieces of editorial and broadcast coverage
-More than four million media impressions
-2,000 Canadian quiz participants
-2,500 social shares
-Five influencers creating one million impressions

The Target

The MATCH Fund and Colony wanted to reach Canadian women and men aged 18 to 40 to enlighten them on injustices women face in other countries.

Insights and Strategy

The insight was based on the notion that for people in North America who don’t encounter major inequalities on a daily basis, it can be difficult to understand the real atrocities women face around the world. While people may acknowledge it, without an emotional tie, it’s challenging to incite action and ultimately meaningful change. With that, Colony knew the strategy needed to get Canadians to put themselves in the shoes of those just like them living in other parts of the world. The agency leveraged that notion to create an idea that would help contrast those differences in a way that was not offensive, but provided a shock-value to drive shareability.

The Plan

The insight around needing to get Canadians to put themselves in other people’s shoes led the agency to the creative solution of producing a short online quiz – titled “How many laws did you break today?” – running through daily activities in the life of an average Canadian woman. At the end, she’s given a result that identifies how many of those activities are illegal for women living in other countries.

The campaign was timed to coincide with IWD on March 8 and featured:
-Online, shareable quiz with personalized and shareable results to highlight accessible human rights that are barred to women in other countries
-Infographic contrasting Canadian freedoms and restrictions other women face
-Media and influencer relations
-Regional media tour in Ottawa/Toronto
-MATCH executive director Jessica Tomlin as spokesperson
-Paid social amplification and digital ad buys (only $900)

The next phase of the campaign was developed to keep the discussion top of mind for Canadians year-round.

“Not International Women’s Day”

On November 16, 2016 The MATCH Fund and Colony partnered to launch the first annual “Not International Women’s Day.” To engage Canadians, the team developed the #LotteryofLife quiz to support “Not International Women’s Day.” The quiz was based on the concept that birth location can determine opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life, particularly for women.

The campaign was supported with:
-An online quiz with built-in social sharing functionality
-A media tour in Toronto with Canadian Olympic gold medalist and hockey player Jennifer Botterill and Jessica Tomlin
-Social media posts and promotion
-Influencer engagement

The Results

With only $900 in paid media, the quiz went viral in 24 hours, was taken almost 500,000 times in more than 100 countries and shared more than 400,000 times. The team’s goals were surpassed by 433%.

Additionally, the campaign received:
-24 million media and social media impressions
-22 pieces of coverage

Key pieces of coverage included:
-Broadcast interview with CTV News and CP24
-Interview with the Ottawa Citizen
-Full-page spread in 24 Hours Toronto
-Other pickup: CBC News Network, Toronto Sun, Edmonton Sun, Calgary Sun, Winnipeg Sun, Sirius XM Radio and Daily Mail UK.

“Not International Women’s Day” Lottery of Life Results:

The campaign generated 22 media hits, 16.4 million impressions, more than 460,000 participants and more than 400,000 social shares to exceed 2016 objectives.

Along with:
-247 social media engagements generating 225,000 impressions
-Cost-per-impression rate of 0.00043
-More than 900 quiz participants
-147 Facebook shares
-45 Twitter shares

The Canadian government recently announced $150 million in global funding for grassroots women’s organizations. It is because of the work that MATCH is involved in and the awareness of this important topic that resulted in the grant.