In 2014, UN Women launched the HeForShe campaign. A global movement for gender equality which calls upon men and boys to help end the persisting inequalities faced by women.

Its goal is to mobilize men all over the world in the promotion of gender equality.

Our core objective was creating a tool to accelerate that.

On the same path, as a company with most of its people workforce and clients comprised of women, Grupo Boticário has been concerned with gender equality since its origins. In 2015, the company signed the Women Empowerment Principles (WEPs) of United Nations, one among many actions they have taken to ensure a more gender equal environment.

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But how to connect with men who don't want to discuss gender equality? How can we deeply understand what's happening with men, going beyond male stereotypes? How does sexism also harms them?

And since no one can force another person to change, what would be effective ways to help men to transform themselves, in order to build a gender equal society?

Also, would it be possible to achieve this in a more constructive and compassionate way, mitigating all the hate speech we see today?

This was our briefing.

The idea came up in the beginning of 2015. Between January and August, we articulated the project details, objectives, timeline and a very limited budget with a team of seven companies, also aligning with UN Women guidelines.

The next two months were spent traveling around the country. We executed the quantitative research only afterwards, to make it based on our initial findings and more assertive.

We launched the online research with the documentary trailer in march of 2016, generating huge buzz and making it easier to get 20.000+ nationwide answers.

We involved key feminist influencers and also male-oriented websites during the whole project, to make sure the language wouldn't harm women in any way, but would also connect with men.

Then we worked on all the data and recorded interviews, finally launching the documentary in november during the "16 Days of Activism", a yearly global UN Women activism period.

Between the trailer and full documentary launch, we had U$267.000 in spontaneous media, in over 200 vehicles — and countless social media reactions from men and women thanking us.

Grupo Boticário had three workshops done with their leaders learning the key research insights, which were then shared with the whole company, giving them invaluable data to stay ahead as a nationwide business who believes in gender equality.

After the launch, over 35 independent events showcasing the documentary or our findings happened. With hundreds of students and teachers in schools and universities, leaders in law offices, political gatherings, ad agencies, NGOs, the Ministry of Justice and even TEDx. We didn't spend a dollar on them.

An average of 5 new independent events per month keep happening until present date (april/2017).

As UN Women will distribute the translated documentary globally in 2017, we're confident this is just the beginning.