Our research proved that the objectification of women in advertising harms all of us. Adults may be becoming increasingly desensitized to objectifying imagery, but children still notice. Children are highly impressionable, and given that they are exposed to thousands of advertisements every day, the way that women are portrayed in ads affects not only their perceptions of how society views women, but how they view themselves.

We wanted to demonstrate this by gauging children’s raw, unfiltered reactions to real OOO ads that objectify women, and to ultimately bring awareness to this phenomenon to show the rest of the industry -- and the world -- the negative effect that objectification has on everyone.

“What Our Kids See” was first shared at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity on June 20th, 2016. Our target audience is the advertising industry, and we took advantage of a concentrated opportunity to communicate directly with advertising’s top players. Therefore, following the premier of our film, we also encouraged the attendees to sign and share our online petition to persuade Cannes Lions to include our criteria of identifying objectification in their 2017 juror packets.

The video and the petition were launched together as a digital campaign on social media, YouTube, Vimeo, and www.womennotobjects.com in order to make them both as shareable as possible.

With the launch, the campaign garnered:

- Over 45 million views

- Reached over 175 countries

- Over 1 billion media impressions

- $17 million in earned media value

- Over 500 influencers signed up to be Ambassadors of the cause

- Received commitments from industry professionals from over 700 top global agencies and brands to never objectify in advertising and to petition Cannes to stop rewarding objectifying ads

- Cannes Lions has agreed to include our criteria for identifying objectification in advertising in their 2017 juror packets in order to educate jurors and prevent objectifying ads from being celebrated

- The Advertising Club of NY/Andy Awards followed suit and called on other awards shows to do the same

- Cannes Lions committed to reducing the size of their juries and will ask every jury to sign off on work, holding them more accountable for what they are awarding.

With #WomenNotObjects, our goal was to harness advertising’s power to effect change by bringing awareness to a problem that’s perpetuated by the ad industry: the objectification of women. As the first agency to acknowledge this problem, we commissioned research that proved that objectification harms all of us, and the only way to end it was for the industry itself to make a change. So we created a social campaign that addressed the detrimental impact of objectification, as well as a petition to Cannes to stop awarding ads that objectify--which we announced on the stage of the 2016 Cannes Lions Festival.

To demonstrate the negative impact of objectification, we gathered young boys and girls and showed them ads that could easily be seen by anyone on the street, after being granted their parents permission. Our intent was to invite the world to experience how young children react to objectifying imagery, vocally and viscerally, when it’s in front of them.

The campaign videos were launched online alongside a digital petition that asked supporters to call on Cannes Lions to cease giving out awards to ads that objectify. We utilized the use of social channels in order to make both our film and our petition as shareable as possible. Our view was that if coveted awards such as Cannes continued to reward bad work, advertisers and marketers had no incentive to stop.

After launching #WomenNotObjects, we commissioned research that proves that objectification of women in advertising harms all of us. Children in particular see over 5,000 ads a day, which shape their perceptions of how women are viewed in society, and how they grow up to view themselves.

We knew that to address this issue, change had to come from within the advertising industry—and it needed to come from the top. So at Cannes Lions 2016, we premiered our third film of #WomenNotObjects, “What Our Kids See”, and simultaneously launched it on social with the call to action to sign our petition to persuade Cannes to stop awarding ads that objectify. The petition was shared and signed by executives from over 700 top global agencies and brands. This ultimately inspired Cannes Lions to include our criteria of identifying gender bias and stereotypes in their 2017 juror packets.