LUX is a global beauty brand with its purpose is to empower women to rise above everyday sexism and express their beauty unapologetically.

LUX has been fulfilling this mission in China for the last 100 years with a series of campaigns that help women smash sexist labels. One of those labels in China is given at birth.

There is an unconscious bias towards men being strong and powerful and women being soft and submissive, therefore naming their children based on gender stereotypes. So men have names like Guó Wěi (Great Nation) and Zhì Háo (Grand Purpose) whilst women have names like Wēi (Tiny) and Yà Nán (Second to man – Inferior to men).

Brief:

Spotlight how women are stuck with sexist names that do not represent them.

Objective: By drawing awareness on the issue, LUX empower women to embrace names that have positive connotations and have confidence in their identity.

As a part of our mission to stand with women against all forms of sexist labels, LUX in partnership with a Professor Liu Yan Chan from the department of linguistics from the University of China created 100 new names to empower modern Chinese women with positive meanings. The names were created and curated drawing inspiration from classical literature, embraced positive connotations and addressed contemporary societal needs.

We created 100 names like these – Yè Lěi (Glowing Potential) and Míng Yǔ (Awaken the Universe) and launched them on social media. We took over parenting platforms to educate parents on naming their children without having a bias.

Women through social media platforms like Weibo and The Little Red Book could access these new names and choose the one that best suites themselves and eventually change their names.

LUX aimed to spark a national conversation about breaking gender bias in naming traditions in China. We needed our communications to grab the attention of the public and more importantly mainstream media to reach women who wanted to change their names.

Listening to the victims of this convention and understanding their needs was key, hence throughout the campaign we’ve implemented surveys to gather data to shape our approach in coming up with better names.

Women who are discontented with their names were already raising their voice on social media with #IHateMyName, so targeting this group with our #InHerName our first response.

We offered them the opportunity to choose a name that reflects their true selves and share it with someone who needs it.

This approach aimed to not only raise awareness but also inspire a cultural shift, encouraging society to move beyond stereotypes when naming girls.

We worked with a linguistic expert from the Communication University of China and created 100 new empowering names. The names were created drawing inspiration from classical literature, embraced positive connotations and addressed contemporary societal needs.

To appeal to our social-savvy audience, we created 100 unique illustrations depicting modern and strong Chinese women, visualising the meaning of the names, while making sure our portraits represent women of all ages, body types and lifestyles.

All 100 names are featured on China’s most popular social media platforms Weibo and Little Red Book (total of 900+ million active users monthly). We launched with an online film and got help from influencers to drive attention to our new names.

We hijacked #Ihatemyname, a hashtag used by 56 million women and targeted parenting platforms to influence the next generation of Chinese women.

We leveraged local news partners to create a comprehensive PR story around our campaign.

Our social led campaign had a massive impact across China, leading to over 1.4 billion impressions to date in China.

Rest of the world couldn’t ignore the issue either where we garnered another 150 million impressions.

We generated $600,000 worth in media value through the conversations that we created on media channels and on social media in the first 3 days.

More than 5 million women saw the new names within the first 3 days.

Post-campaign surveys indicated 78% of women who have seen the campaign and the new names have considered changing their names. 74% of them said they believe having a powerful name is an advantage. 56% of them told they want a stronger name for their daughters.

During the campaign week, we’ve seen 103% increase in web search for stronger baby names.

In April 2024, a newborn girl received one of our names Li Rui (resilient).