Always was a leadership brand looking for a way to create a deeper emotional connection with women. As a brand, Always is positioned around 'confidence' based on superior product performance, but we wanted to champion girls’ confidence more overtly. Our research uncovered that girls’ confidence plummets during puberty, significantly more than boys.

Empowering girls during this critical life stage, especially with confidence being lowest around her first period, gave Always a powerful role. We researched the many ways that society undermines a girl’s confidence and took on a big confidence killer, the common playground insult “Like A Girl” - often used in a demeaning way to make girls feel less confident. Our goal became to inspire a movement by reversing the meaning of this common phrase.

We conducted and filmed a social experiment to show how society contributes to girls’ confidence drop and how a seemingly innocent expression “Like A Girl”, can squash a girl’s confidence.

What started as an online video inspired tens of millions of people across the globe - both men and women, - to join our social media campaign to show that doing things “Like A Girl” means doing something with confidence, conviction and pride.

The United Nations acknowledges that fighting against constraints and obstacles to the empowerment of women is critical to generating economic progress, social and political inclusion and other benefits that, in turn, foster stability and human dignity.

However, too many girls and women today are still targets of unfair treatment and practices that traumatize them physically and mentally, hindering their ability to fulfill their potential as strong women. All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education, political representation, labor market, etc — with negative repercussions for development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice.

To end that, not only do we need to educate people about the pivotal role women play in the society, but we also need to help women themselves build and maintain their confidence throughout their lives – starting at a young age.

As a brand committed to supporting girls’ confidence around the globe, Always decided to join the fight and to address the most frequent confidence killer – a common everyday insult that shatters girls’ confidence when they are most vulnerable – at puberty.

In line with The United Nations agenda and the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action adopted by 189 member states, Always found a way to change mind-sets, especially among men, and engage both women and men in becoming active change-agents themselves.

The results were an unprecedented social movement that challenged gender bias and shattered stereotypical images of women, garnering over 85 million views across 150 countries.

Over 1 MM viewers shared the video; #LikeAGirl earned 4.58 billion impressions with 96% positive feedback, and purchase intent increased 92% in the UK. There were over 758.9MM mentions of #LikeAGirl, 95,000 pieces of user generated content, and #LikeAGirl was mentioned on Twitter at a rate of 1 tweet every 90 seconds during the peak period.

It achieved worldwide coverage in top-tier media (311 stories) fueling conversation around the globe on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, The One Show, Good Morning America and others. Celebrities and female leaders began tweeting the video with Chelsea Clinton, Melinda Gates, and Gloria Steinhem joining the movement.

More than 20 prominent female organizations, such as Lean In, Girl Scouts, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, Girl Rising and Global Fund for Women joined our mission to create a gender-neutral landscape free from bias.

The UN Women National Committee of The United States has also acknowledged the campaign’s extraordinary positive social impact by granting us an Award for Breaking Social Stereotypes in recognition of the powerful and positive portrayal of women and girls.

The drop in confidence that girls experience at puberty is a globally common thread that connects all girls across all markets. Sadly, a girl doesn’t lack the confidence until she reaches puberty, when changes in her body cause doubts at the same time that her sensitivity to social norms are more heightened than ever.

One of the many knocks to a girl’s confidence at this time is when she hears the common playground insult of doing things “Like A Girl” – used to describe a weak behavior or action pejoratively – for example, “you throw like a girl.”

Although we used the phrase “Like A Girl” in English in our campaign, the stereotype and confidence knock rang true in every language and culture. In other countries, we discovered that there are phrases that convey a similar insult toward girls. For example in China, “nü lî nü qì” means “girly” and in France, the phrase “comme une femmelette,” means “little woman.” Both of these phrases are used as insults toward men or women by describing them as being weak.

Despite the cultural nuances, the phrase “Like A Girl” translated in all of our markets and provoked the same power and emotion as it did in the US; “Como una niña”, “Comme une fille”, and “xiàng nü hái yî yàng.”

For over 30 years, Always has been a champion of girls globally through their period education programs that help keep girls in school. But few knew about Always efforts in these areas. As a true women’s brand, Always wanted to help girls grow into strong confident women by inspiring and encouraging them at a critical time of their lives: puberty.

While girls worldwide were already familiar with our brand and the functional benefits it offered, our strategy was to make it truly iconic by connecting with girls everywhere in a more authentic way.

As a femcare brand, Always had the right to speak to girls worldwide about feminine issues, but the brand also felt that championing girls confidence and changing the world one girl at a time was so important that we needed to broaden our message to encourage men and women to join us in the mission to inspire girls. With the desire to drive a societal change, we knew we had to find a creative way to deliver the message so it resonated not only with our girls but with all those who impact their confidence on a daily basis.

Given our target of 18-24 year old girls, we knew if we could leverage the social sphere to spark a movement, we would be able to create a real-life impact that would truly empower our girls. To do this, we created a powerful video that was a social experiment showcasing how we all use and interpret the phrase “Like a Girl” in a negative stereotype. We seeded it on YouTube and with key influencers to ignite the issue and to begin to change the universally pejorative meaning of doing things “Like A Girl.”