The Autocomplete Truth.
Ads for UN Women built on real Google autocomplete suggestions about women, with the search box placed over each woman's mouth.
- Brand
- UN Women
- Agency
- Memac Ogilvy
- Market
- United Arab Emirates
- Region
- Global
- Year
- 2013
The challenge
UN Women, a UN body created in 2010, wanted to show people who saw gender inequality as a thing of the past that discrimination against women was still widespread. The agency's entry says it also needed global exposure to back its work for women around the world.
The idea
Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai used real Google autocomplete suggestions for phrases such as "women should", "women shouldn't", "women need to" and "women cannot", from searches on 9 March 2013, in a series of four ads. Each shows a portrait of a woman with the search box over her mouth, "as if to silence their voices", in UN Women's words. UN Women released the ads in October 2013 and invited people to respond on Twitter under #womenshould. According to the entrant's case published by WARC, it began as a press campaign in the UAE before spreading online, and the agency says outdoor, posters and an online film seeded on news sites, blogs and social media took it further.
Results
- 1.3 billion global impressions and 335 million Twitter impressions by 2015, according to the agency's One Show 2015 entry
- Over US$7 million in earned media and a 32.5% rise in donations, according to the Cannes Creative Effectiveness 2015 case published by WARC
- Google stopped offering autocomplete for a number of the phrases afterwards, according to Memac Ogilvy's executive creative director Ramzi Moutran
Case study source: UN Women Source ↗
Awards
- Clio Awards 2014Clio Awards / Public Relations / Cause RelatedSilver
- Cannes Lions 2014Titanium LionsTitanium
- Clio Awards 2014Clio Awards / Content & Contact / Content and ContactSilver
- Cannes 2014: Gold Lions in PR and twice in Promo & Activation, plus a Silver
- Cannes Lions 2015 Bronze, Creative Effectiveness
- Dubai Lynx 2014: eight Golds, four Silvers and two Bronzes
- D&AD 2014 Wood Pencil, Integrated & Earned Media
- One Show 2015 Gold Pencil, Social Media, and Silver Pencil, Integrated Branding
- Red Dot 2015 Best of the Best, Social Campaign
Credits
- PR
- Ogilvy PR
- Creative director
- Ramzi Moutran
- Associate creative director
- Sascha Kuntze
- Copywriter
- Kareem Shuhaibar
- Art directors
- Christopher Hunt, Sabia Fatayri and Leonardo Borges
