GIVE KATE A VOICE

TitleGIVE KATE A VOICE
BrandBAUER MEDIA
Product / ServiceBRAND AWARENESS
CategoryD02. Interactive Video
EntrantVANISHING POINT STUDIO Nelson, NEW ZEALAND
Idea Creation VANISHING POINT STUDIO Nelson, NEW ZEALAND
Production VANISHING POINT STUDIO Nelson, NEW ZEALAND

Credits

Name Company Position
Charles Anderson Vanishing Point Studio Creative Director
Allan Walker Vanishing Point Studio Interactive Creative Director
Jill McNabb Vendetta Productions Producer
Charlotte Evans Charlotte Evans Director
Vanessa Wells Elanti Media Director

Background

Everyone knows speeches by famous men through history - Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, Nelson Mandela - but can you name a line from single famous speech by a woman off the top of your head? Why is this? In 1893, New Zealander Kate Sheppard, along with her fellow suffragists, gathered the signatures of nearly 32,000 women to demonstrate the groundswell of support for their cause. She rallied them with persistence, compelling speechmaking and eloquent writings. But if you Google “Kate Sheppard speech” you will be lost in a rabbit-hole of other people making speeches about her. Her work led to New Zealand becoming the first country in the world where women were allowed to vote. On the 125th anniversary of this law change, Bauer Media wanted a branding project to engage modern audiences in Sheppard's historic words. They wanted to make Kate Sheppard go viral in 2018.

Describe the creative idea

We brought together eight modern day champions of equality in New Zealand to breathe back life into Sheppard's words. We studied historic documents and mashed up Sheppard's speeches and writings into a powerful piece of text that was then performed by our cast. Each woman represented a different era of history from 1890 to 2019. We created an almost all female film crew to shoot the project in a historic homestead over the course of a week. We filmed it as such to allow an interactive web project to be built allowing users to become the director in the video they watched - so they could delve more into the context that surrounded each era the cast members were speaking in. The concept puts the viewer in control of a compelling message. This was paired with personal video essays from each of the women.

Describe the strategy

The target audience was the Bauer Media women's magazine and online readership. This is a mixture of 40+ women but online it drops to 18-35. We wanted to showcase a diversity of characters to allow a mainstream New Zealand audience to connect to its message. We tested a variety of different teasers to the project across Facebook and Twitter and checked for engagement, finding that promotional images using more of the cast's faces connected more with the audience. This seemed to support the thesis of offering a diversity was the best way forward. Bauer Media owns several brands spanning women's magazines and current affairs publications. We created a cross platform approach for promotion between these - changing imagery and angles depending on which publication was being targeted.

Describe the execution

In the weeks before the launch, which was timed for the 125 anniversary on September 19, we orchestrated a photo shoot with the women involved, while they were on set. This was launched in Bauer's flagship magazine - Woman's Day and pointed towards the coming interactive project. We then created social videos out of each of the women's videos, along with a teaser trailer, which were launched across Facebook and Twitter. The hero site was constantly promoted with the hashtag #GiveKateaVoice which we got trending in New Zealand on September 19. We also created a master cut of the video that was shared and promoted across Bauer's digital channels.

List the results

Across Facebook and YouTube the videos were viewed more than 200,000 times with a reach approaching 500,000 people in a population of 4 million. The full interactive site had more than 50,000 unique users that engaged with at least 3/4 of the project. The project put Bauer Media at the forefront of content created for the Suffrage 125 anniversary and allowed them to leverage sales into associated promotions in magazines and online. It was deemed a success by Bauer Media and it remains its most watched video on its Facebook and YouTube channels. It also pushed the company into thinking more laterally about its digital offer in the interactive space and how the design and technology might be used in other promotional projects.

Links

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