The strategy was straight: despite the majority of clients and agencies that use international women’s day as an opportunity to promote new products or to offer special discounts, we wanted to use our advertising skills to really help this gender equality movement.

When we talk about strikes and social movements, there is one obvious and powerful element that deserves the best copyrighting to have the best impact: PLACARDS.

Thus, the idea was simple: create impactful slogans and placards for the campaign and let the people download them and walk with them on the streets.

In collaboration with the 30 major French feminists syndicates, ONG, and organization, we analysed the most important topics about gender inequalities in France (salary, retreat, political representation, vacations, etc..) and created a series of 11 prints with sharp copyrighting and pop artistic direction. We put all these files in open source download in order to equip all the people that wanted to join the movement.

Then, we created the hashtag: #8mars15H40 to gather and concentrate all the conversation and initiatives on that particular day.

Because most women can’t afford the luxury to go on strike, we also launched the 1st virtual strike in history by creating http://8marsengreve.com/, a website where people could create their own custom placard, upload it on their FB cover picture and virtually stage the protest.

The D-day, our agency became the meeting point for everyone that wanted to be part of the movement.

The hashtag #8mars15h40 became a national statement for any woman to fight for equality, more than 3.000 people created their own slogan and changed their FB cover picture, plenty of press articles and interviews were published and our billboards were everywhere.

We raised general awareness about the equal pay gap and mobilized more than 20.000 women to take part in the protest and march for economic justice. And last but not least, the women inequalities’ topic started to became a part of the political debate