The Campaign

Uniqueness of Made in Equality: We tell stories. We strongly felt that the stories and struggles of RMG workers needed to be put out there for people to truly understand that even in the face of all struggles and uncertainties, RMG workers are powering through. Our project is first of its kind that aims to generate public interest in improving the RMG industry driven by women. MiE is a platform which shows garment workers and others in the industry in a new light. We used the platform to demonstrate that the RMG industry is helping the workers shape their lives, giving them the opportunity to lead a life of dignity. For this project, we built a website to give stories their own identity and used Facebook, YouTube & Instagram as platforms. These stories were told by the workers from a personal point of view; a first-of-its-kind in the industry, globally.

Creative Execution

Each story featured in the platform was published along with a photograph of the worker. The stories were published in both English and Bengali with an objective to reach both local and global audience. Besides the website, contents were distributed through Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. MiE featured 160+ personal stories in forms of text & videos. Stories were backed by data for post timings, responsiveness of target area, etc. We created a few heartwarming videos and a photo series celebrating Women in the RMG sector. We have also implemented “Meet the Makers,” an exhibition that showcased life & stories of women in RMG sector. We have partnered with Fashion Revolution to cross-promote contents and reach a bigger audience in other parts of the world while we tied up with olocal NGOs, renowned volunteering platforms, influencers and celebrities in Bangladesh to endorse our campaign through their personal channels and network.

MiE received overwhelming responses in form of reactions, comments, and shares. It received 4.5 million engagements and 3.8 million clicks from 11 million Bangladeshis on Facebook (45% of all Facebook users in Bangladesh was engaged in this campaign) in 1 year. The CTR was 11.65% (industry average being 5%)! Cost per engagement was .001 USD which is at least 10x lower than the industry average. Our videos have 7m+ views. The MiE Facebook page has gained 104,000+ followers in last one year, organically. Impact: MiE received public acclamations. It was featured in The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Fashion Revolution, The Daily Star and other major platforms. Influential personalities in Bangladesh also endorsed the campaign. We have successfully helped increase transparency & empowered women through storytelling in garment industry using digital media by giving everyone the opportunity to take a closer look into the lives of those who are making their clothes.

Why we took a storytelling approach: Our research based on Facebook Ads served for WebAble clients in Bangladesh; analyzing over 1.7B impressions in two years (clicks & impressions) suggested the following pattern of click-through rates across various industries: Retail (4.1%), FMCG (4.7%), News (5.9%) & Storytelling (10%). Based on this data, storytelling was the most promising approach to content marketing for Made in Equality. To collect stories, our team went down to the slums; spent one-on-one time with the workers. Target audience: With the Rana Plaza tragedy, Bangladesh was brought under the spotlight globally. Thus, we had to reach the whole world with our stories. We started with targeting migrant Bangladeshi workers residing in the middle east and other areas with heavy density of Bengali citizens. Slowly, we expanded to the US, & then the European Union region which remain the largest markets for Bangladeshi textile industry.