The Campaign

The Pakistani bride is known to wear an elaborate wedding outfit: bright, colorful, heavily embroidered dresses with flashy jewelry. Every year, the Pakistani bridal-wear fashion industry hosts large events in which new styles are revealed. These shows are typically attended by local celebrities and have extensive media coverage. This year, our idea was to hijack the country's largest bridal fashion show, where we would launch a new kind of bridal gown: one that highlights the fact that an early marriage results in loss of education and empowerment for a girl. We collaborated with the nation's best known fashion designer to design the "Bridal Uniform": A typical Pakistani schoolgirl's uniform was merged with a traditional Pakistani bride's wedding gown, through the use of local embroidery patterns and motifs sewn directly into the uniform. And on the night of the biggest show, we surprised everybody by revealing it as the show-stopper.

The Brief

The main artwork in this campaign - the dress itself - cost under $100 to make, which was the total cost of the campaign. School uniforms are inexpensive in Pakistan, and the minimal cost we accrued was for the labor involved and the embroidery threads. The highly publicized media event was hijacked at no cost. All the media present at the event was assigned to the fashion show through fashion sponsors, which we hijacked at zero cost. There was no budget spent on media.

Creative Execution

The Bridal Uniform had been created by merging traditional wedding outfit embroidery patterns with a common government school girl's uniform. Ali Xeeshan had meticulously researched bridal gown designs and found the perfect balance of what a school uniform would look like as a dress for a wedding, and hand stitched the piece. To perform our stunt, we picked the biggest bridal fashion show in the country where we knew we would get maximum media coverage. The project was top secret, and even the show organizers were not aware of the stunt until it was revealed.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

A sitting senator of Pakistan's parliament took note of this campaign and a bill proposing to raise the legal marriage age to 18 has now been sent to the Islamic Council of Pakistan, who has agreed to review it. The senator has DIRECTLY acknowledged the effect of this campaign in the efforts to pass the bill. The disruptive stunt went viral and generated almost 500,000,000 social and news-media impressions, more than any campaign for this cause has ever done in the country. The topic of child marriages started trending, and both the international and local press reported on it. #BridalUniform, besides being adopted by on-ground local NGOs to educate villagers on the importance of keeping girls in schools, has also made an appearance on Berlin and LosAngeles catwalks, and talks are underway to feature the stunt at New York Fashion Week to highlight the same issue in seven different countries.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Creating a truly experiential stunt, we hijacked the country's largest bridal fashion show in order to make a statement against child marriages. This was done using a special bridal gown that we had designed (at a cost of under $100) to be disruptive, impactful and having the power to transform perceptions.

Our strategy was to connect directly with the public by surprising them and piggybacking on the media wave that followed the event, completely hijacking the conversation around it. The stunt was then followed by on-ground educational sessions that addressed the issue where it truly made a difference. The campaign targeted people on two levels. Through the stunt, we first targeted the influencers and media personnel who could spread the conversation that built pressure to involve policymakers. And second, through on-ground sessions, directly addressing the masses where these practices were widely prevalent. The dress cost under $100 to make, which was the total cost of the campaign. The highly publicized media event was hijacked at no cost.