In Spain, children are educated around the values of equality, however, people do not realize that they can perpetuate sexist stereotypes by giving a specific type of toys to their children. Prioritizing a pink world of care and beauty for girls (68.2% of advertisements targeting girls include these stereotypes) and a world of heroes, action and the colour blue for boys (71% of advertisements aimed at boys include these stereotypes).

That’s why the Ministry of Consumer Affairs wanted to develop a campaign to raise awareness about the impact that toys have on children’s development. A project with a great objective: to open a social debate about gender stereotypes on toys and its advertising.

To make families and toymakers think about this problem, on 12th December toys called a #ToyStrike. Children and parents stopped playing for one hour and instead shared on social media a photo of their toys "on strike" using our digital strike kit and the hashtag #TOYSTRIKE.

The campaign managed to attract the attention of the media and raise public awareness by using a resource never before promoted by a public administration in Spain: a strike.

This caught the attention of Spanish media outlets, opening a debate around gender stereotypes perpetuated by toys and raising public awareness of this problem.

The problem wasn’t about giving a doll to a girl or a soccer ball to a boy. The real issue is continuously giving the same type of toy to the same gender, reinforcing the stereotypes.

We wanted to make all Spaniards aware that, while giving a toy as a gift can be a joy, if we always give the same type of toy, we are giving a limitation.

With the aim of creating a social debate that would not leave anyone indifferent, we launched the first piece of the campaign so that both the media and the defenders of equality would echo the campaign. We wanted them to act as a loudspeaker to reach all the people who that we could not reach through our own channels.

The campaign was launched on December 9th through an official video statement posted on all the Ministry's social networks. Toys claimed their right to play with all children and called for all Spanish children and families to join the movement with their toys through a digital strike on the 12th of the month.

The seed was already planted, we just needed Spaniards to accept the message and join our protest. For those who wanted to participate we created a protest kit with digital banners, GIFs and stickers filled with our slogans so that children could join the protest with their toys from home. Social networks flooded with images of toys on "strike” using our hashtag.

This action was carefully timed by the Ministry to coincide with the highest sales period of toys.

The debate became so big that it got 14 hours of TV & radio coverage and more than 1,300 press mentions, which allowed us to get 3.000 million Impressions and €56.9M in Earned Media.

The tool used for data collection is Kantar Media.

430,000 people joined the digital strike and the campaign hashtag #HuelgaDeJuguetes (#ToyStrike) remained a trending topic for 3 consecutive days, increasing the conversation about sexism in toys by +1,210%.

The campaign reached 413 million total audience impacted, 60.3 million interactions and €56.9M in Earned Media.

The effectiveness of the #ToyStrike campaign is demonstrated 4 months after its launch. Thanks to a society that was aware that toys perpetuate gender stereotypes, the agents involved: Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the Spanish Association of Toy Manufacturers (AEFJ) and the Spanish Agency for Advertising Regulation (Autocontrol), signed an agreement that will co-regulate a non sexist communication on toys next Christmas.