The Brief

ANZ’s Equal Future campaign tapped into a simple, compelling fact: girls start ahead in life. They learn to speak, read and write before boys do. Yet women often end up far behind men, particularly financially. Starting with this troubling insight, we commissioned The Connolly Partnership to produce a White Paper examining the gender divide. We then signed up Oscar-winning director Jane Campion (the only female director to ever win the Cannes Palm D’or) to execute an online film protesting this bias. For the media launch, we enlisted another female trailblazer – Australia’s first-ever female prime minister, Julia Gillard. And at the launch, we announced ANZ’s #equalfuture initiatives, including: extra superannuation payments to their female employees, plus additional payments to those on unpaid maternity leave. We then challenged other organizations to do the same. And invited female and male Australians to voice their support, or opposition, to the initiatives, using #equalfuture.

Creative Execution

The creative solution came from one troubling insight — girls develop far ahead of boys (learning to speak, read and write before boys do), yet somehow, women end up far behind, particularly financially. To protest this inequality, we partnered with Oscar winner Jane Campion, the only female director to ever win a Cannes Palme D’Or, to create a provocative online film calling for an Equal Future. To examine the gender divide, we commissioned The Connolly Partnership to produce a White Paper. We enlisted Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to launch the campaign. ANZ Bank then announced extra superannuation payments to all their female employees, plus further contributions for ANZ employees on unpaid parental leave. We then challenged Australia’s biggest organizations to do the same for their employees. We asked for media and public support by responding #EqualFuture. For every post, ANZ donated $1 to the International Women’s Development Agency.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Our audience is women; both existing and potential female customers. We know that women prefer their financial advisers to listen to them, not to “sell” or lecture to them. The industry’s perceived “close the sale” bias is at odds with how women want to be approached. Where a campaign for men might talk to expertise and knowledge, to connect with women, we needed to show that ANZ is on their side and truly committed to supporting women to build their financial strength. But we needed more than words. We needed purposeful actions and a platform to foster meaningful, two-way dialogue.

Results

Just ten days after launching, the video has been viewed over 600,000 times across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. A response rate of one view every 1.5 seconds. With nearly $10m in PR coverage reaching a global audience of 112m and over 8,000 #equalfuture social posts, the commentary has been incredibly positive (70%+ positive social sentiment). While too early to assess expense-to-revenue ratios, the millions of dollars in earned media alone sees a healthy campaign ROI. And with the phones starting to ring to take up the free advice offer to those with less than $50,000 in super, the cost-per-lead is reducing rapidly each day. And, perhaps most the most significant result of all: Australia’s three major political parties have now called for a senate enquiry into Women’s superannuation.