Background

Coca-Cola Myanmar has been running Women’s inclusion initiatives at the grassroots and value-chain level for years. This international women’s Day, it wanted to not focus on a specific campaign or program, but personalize all of its good work by putting faces to the names and cooperating with traditional and new media to raise awareness of the programs and its “Doing Business The Right Way” promise. Through various empowerment, business skills & entrepreneurial training programs, Coca-Cola Myanmar have positively impacted the lives of more than 60,000 women in Myanmar over the past six years. It was the agency’s job to take this and create a campaign for international women’s day that would tell inspirational stories of empowerment and success, supporting corporate reputation and gender inclusion using its nationwide supply chain and reach. Objectives: Take the focus off the brand while still promoting a positive image and reputation for Coca-Cola as a corporate citizen. Identify the women within national and ethnic communities (not just predominately Burmese Yangon) who participated in Coca-Cola’s programs then succeeded in their field and tell their stories in tier-1 traditional and new media. Give inspiration to many women in Myanmar as possible.

Describe the cultural/social/political climate in your region and the significance of your campaign within this context

Normally in Myanmar on women’s day, and every day, media are only able and willing to cover women in the city of Yangon who are high profile and easy to find / access. Furthermore, these women are often well-connected and from higher society, with friends who own media channels, incredibly wealthy parents who have funded their business ventures or are generally well connected. These stories are often not relatable to normal Myanmar women, and often make everyday women feel like success is a “castle in the sky” they can not achieve, losing confidence or ambition for their own dreams, and those of their daughters. This is amplified among ethnic communities in Myanmar – of which there are over 130.

Describe the creative idea

Since the emergence of mass media in 2012 in Myanmar, the focus of news media typically focuses on business, economics and politics. Human interest takes a back-seat with one exception, people with influence and wealth. The junior nature of Myanmar’s nascent media means they aren’t always trained to seek or report on general interest or people who aren’t already famous/visible. Much of this is due to low funding for local media. It's not practical to spend money and time to go around the country to develop content around women’s stories – if they can even find them. So as Coca-Cola, we sponsored trips to visit the women who have achieved great things under Coca-Cola’s sustainability programs for women, SwanYi (empowerment), LehtLi (retail skill training) and Achieve Your Best Self (internal relations), then we co-created content and curated all the stories in a brand journalism / video journalism format.

Describe the strategy

Our campaign proposal was to lend a voice to women who are too busy or far away for the media to find. We wanted to change the conversation this Women’s Day and challenge the norm of who was considered worth profiling. So we did the leg work of finding these women and stories so that everyday women & readers could hear stories that were more relatable and inspirational, instead of the typical high-society success story that dominates the media on every Women’s Day. We gave ”every woman” the idea that business is accessible to them. Allow the average woman the same opportunity to have successes told in the fashionable style as those from high society. Our push for equality covered more than just delivering key facts about gender equality – but this year we wanted to balance for better the editorial space around women from an overlooked, underserved socio-economic class.

Describe the execution

We put on our journalist hats and met trainers, organizations and individuals along Coca-Cola’s supply chain and sustainability initiatives to identify interesting stories of stand-out women from retail & entrepreneurial skills and others from different parts of the country, often ethnic minorities, who are touched by Coke’s sustainability programs. Then we wrote profiles and stories and began reaching out to monthly and weekly tier-1 and high-reach special interest publications with the profiles so they could decide which stories they found the most interesting. Following this we would facilitate trips to visit the ethnic & regional communities around the country where we would develop a variety of content. We promised them not just exclusive interviews, but we created unique assets for the media’s social and web presences, viral/buzzworthy videos shot in publication-appropriate ways they could brand with their own logo and put on their pages for International Women’s Day.

Describe the results/impact

We shared more than 22 stories of seven women across target media, raised $30,000+ in ad value during the week of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2019 – on only seven women’s stories - evidence that the quality of coverage for them was incredible. 100% media participation, all top tier media in Myanmar. All major monthly magazines participated, meaning our shelf life of the campaign will extend through April and as long as the magazines sit on shelves around the country. This wasn’t a fly-by-night quick media pitch, but it is the start of a cultural shift that we hope will last every year. 107k shares on FB videos, 3.1m reach, 7 media trips managed, 9 full pages of coverage, 22 total exposures in tier-1 lifestyle.