Brief Explanation

The objective of the spot is to illustrate how differences in gender are perceived by society. So we showed men and women doing the same thing but being labeled differently. For this message to come across strongly, there needed to be complete symmetry within the scenario as we moved from man to woman. But with one glaring difference: the labels used to describe them. For instance, a man taking charge in the boardroom was given the label “boss”, but his female counterpart was labeled “bossy”. A man giving an impassioned speech is "persuasive", but a woman is "pushy". The spot then continues to depict both genders in different scenarios: as working parents, and so on. The film ends with a call to action for women ¬– inspiring them to overcome labels and shine boldly.

Creative Execution

The Pantene Labels Against Women video shows the absurdity of gender bias. So ‘Mad World’ seemed to be the perfect track to underscore it. Unlike the more popular male covers that existed and were used in advertisements, we decided to record a version using a female vocalist. We auditioned some of the country’s top singers, but in the end chose an unknown voice talent. Soon after our film was uploaded, hundreds of comments on YouTube demanded to know who the singer is, while more and more users asked for a download link to the full song. They also lauded our version of the widely covered single, calling it ‘awesome’, ‘perfect’, and ‘best version so far’. Perhaps the highest praise we got for the song adaptation was when Curt Smith, vocalist of Tears for Fears – the band who wrote and originally performed the song – commended our cover on his Facebook page saying that it is a ‘Nice use of Mad World!’ He also gave recognition to the campaign by posting a link of our online film, saying ‘Amazing Pantene ad defiantly tackles how women in the workplace are labeled.’