DNB is Norway’s biggest bank. In the Dutch Equilelap Gender Equality Report from 2019, DNB ranked as the top company in Norway when it comes to gender equality – placing fourth globally within finance, and eight in total. As a company at the forefront of gender equality, they wanted to take on the Gender Wealth Gap in Norway. Looking into their own figures and analyzes they found an extremely imbalanced economical distribution. All parameters, from bank deposits, capital income and wealth, showed that Norwegian men were much richer than women. Beyond a wage gap, men invest far more of their money than women, which has resulted in a Gender Wealth Gap now equal to the entire state budget of Norway (NOK 1216 billion) DNB called out for an important conversation around gender inequality in Norwegian investments – launching a campaign made to inspire and engage women to invest.

Insights: While working through the insights with DNB, we found that Norwegian men have almost an entire Norwegian state budget more in wealth than Norwegian women (NOK 1216 billion). Norwegian men own 80 per cent of all private equity values on the stock exchange, and last year 80 per cent of all share dividends went to men. Even if all wages were equal tomorrow, men would still earn 53 billion more than women. The ones who run the world, are the ones who own it. And Norway is certainly not owned by women. To give Norwegian women a serious wake-up call and hopefully spark an actual change, we put our insights to good use and launched #girlsinvest: A full-scale educational campaign aimed to engage, inspire and motivate women to invest more of their money.

As the statistics in themselves were eye-opening enough on their own, we made the facts the centre of the campaign. We gathered all our insights, and used them directly as the communication itself. The strategy became about where to say it. We carefully orchestrated a media strategy based on creating as much of a conversation as possible. The result was #girlsinvest: an insight-based integrated campaign with startling findings to help shatter the illusion of Norwegian equality - and the first ever commercial message to shed light on the Gender Wealth Gap we have in Norway. Through inventive and non-traditional media channels, we were able to reach the right people at the right time, resulting in massive social debate that was seen, shared and discussed on every imaginable platform.

To start the conversation, we made a film where we got Beyoncés approval to strip the word “girls” from the world’s most iconic female anthem “Run the World”. The film ends with the line “We can’t run the world if we don’t own it.” The message was supported by an integrated campaign aimed to engage, inspire and motivate women to invest more of their money. We made a website where women could educate themselves in the investment world and get a full understanding of the Gender Wealth Gap. Facts were projected on the walls of the Norwegian Stock Exchange. We also teamed up with Norway’s equivalent to Forbes, Kapital magazine, where their annual list of Norway’s 400 richest this year included a twin magazine from DNB – the exact same list, but without all the men.

The #girlsinvest campaign sparked a massive conversation. Every major news outlet in Norway discussed the topic – resulting in #girlsinvest becoming most talked-about commercial campaign in Norway in 2019. As the conversation grew, every major Norwegian bank published their support for the initiative, and joined DNB in order to work together to help close the Gender Wealth Gap. And most importantly, the insight-driven campaign also drew women to invest. In just the first three weeks of the campaign, total investments made by women went up by +30%, and it’s still growing to this day. 83% increase in new female investors compared to the previous year. 53% increase in total. And for the first time in Norwegian history, there were more women than men who started to invest in funds.