Title | THE WOMAN BEHIND THE VOICE |
Brand | I TOUCH MYSELF PROJECT |
Product / Service | I TOUCH MYSELF PROJECT |
Category | A01. Glass |
Entrant | WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Idea Creation | WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production | COLLIDER Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production 2 | WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Post Production | COLLIDER Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Simon Langley | Wunderman Thompson | Chief Creative Officer |
Sinead Roarty | Wunderman Thompson | Creative Director |
Amee Wilson | Wunderman Thompson | Art Director |
James Southey | Wunderman Thompson | Copywriter |
Angela Morris | Wunderman Thompson | National Chief Strategy Officer |
Ana Lynch | Wunderman Thompson | Partner |
Bronte Rohig | Wunderman Thompson | Engagement Manager |
Gabe Hammond | Wunderman Thompson | Senior Producer |
Kel Gronow | Wunderman Thompson | Editor |
Brie Stewart | Wunderman Thompson | Creative Director, Content |
Sam Cole | Wunderman Thompson | Senior Front End Developer |
Joe Campbell | Wunderman Thompson | Senior Front End Developer |
Ari Friedgut | Wunderman Thompson | Front End Developer |
Jackie Archer | Wunderman Thompson | Head of Production |
Chloe Marshall | Wunderman Thompson | Junior Production |
Charley Drayton | I Touch Myself Project | Director |
Pat Thrall | Freelance | Music Composer |
Abby Sie | Song Zu | Sound Designer |
Karen Jacobsen | N/A | The Woman Behind the Voice |
Andrew van der Westhuyzen | Collider | Director |
Hugh Carrick-Allan | Collider | Technical Director |
Rachael Ford-Davies | Collider | Executive Producer |
Lucy Pilkington | Collider | NYC Shoot Producer |
Jonathon Pilkington | Collider | DoP |
Charley Drayton | I Touch Myself Project | Executive Director |
Marcia Mason | I Touch Myself Project | Director |
Bernard Drayton | I Touch Myself Project | Director |
Rahni Sadler | I Touch Myself Project | Ambassador |
UTS ProtoSpace | UTS ProtoSpace | 3D scans |
Every day two women under 40 are diagnosed with breast cancer. Up to 80% of young women find symptoms themselves. Yet it’s still not widely discussed or practiced by enough women to make a difference. Data showed us that 85% of young women seek health advice online with an increasing reliance on voice assistants. But we discovered that Siri, one of the world’s most widely used assistants, had major gaps in her breast health knowledge. When you ask Siri ‘how do I check my breasts’ or ‘boobs’, she doesn’t know. Yet shockingly she can tell men how to check their testicles for cancer and responds to slang like ‘balls’ and ‘nuts’. Gender bias in tech is not only sexist, it’s dangerous, creating barriers to vital health information. The I Touch Myself Project decided to expose the gender bias in AI to encourage tech giants to make their devices more inclusive.
Australia is a developed nation with a government and population strongly supportive of gender equality. In 1983, Australia signed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Signing the convention is a commitment to promote gender equality in Australia through policies, laws, organisations, structures and attitudes that work towards the equality of all genders. Upon signing the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Australia introduced the Sex Discrimination Act 1984. This is federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination. Under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, people are protected from discrimination and unfair treatment due to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, relationship status, pregnancy or breastfeeding. As such, this campaign not only addressed a serious health issue, but a discrimination issue that went against the law and fundamental beliefs of Australian society.
Siri can’t tell women how to check their breasts for cancer, but, through this campaign, the woman behind her voice could. We partnered with the original voice of Siri, Karen Jacobsen – whose voice is heard on over a billion devices worldwide – to provide young women with the life-saving breast health information they couldn’t access and put pressure on tech companies to update their devices.
Our strategy was to leverage this shocking example of gender bias to draw attention to both the gender bias in Siri’s missing knowledge and raise awareness of the importance of breast self-checking. We aimed to generate the earned media we needed to reignite the conversation around the inherent gender bias in tech with the hope that tech giants would update their devices to make them more inclusive. Our creative strategy was to highlight the missing information by providing young women with the breast health information Siri couldn’t.
Given our audience’s media habits, we needed to put breast education onto social media, but had to overcome the platforms’ nipple censorship. We used 3D mapping technology to create a digital avatar, the first time Siri has had a body, so she could demonstrate breast self-examinations without censorship. We recorded the responses Siri couldn’t answer to create an instructional breast check video to spread the vital breast health information and send a powerful message about gender bias. The campaign launched on national television with an interview with Karen Jacobsen, and the video was sent out to influencers and shared across social media. But we didn’t stop there. We discovered that Siri wasn’t the only voice assistant with gaps in her knowledge. We created an Alexa breast check skill – to ensure that until tech giants make their devices more inclusive, women can still access life-saving breast health information.
Against our target of driving awareness via earned media coverage: • Launched with a national television on-air interview with Karen Jacobsen ~ 940,000 viewership • Further coverage on morning television show Sunrise ~ 440,000 viewership • 50.2K online impressions Although this campaign launched the week the World Health Organisation officially declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, we really value what the campaign has achieved. It is still very much alive, helping spread the message of the importance of breast self-examinations and fighting gender bias in tech. We believe that every extra woman who knows how to check her breasts helps in the fight against breast cancer. Hopefully it will remind even you, or someone you know, to do a breast check.
Website URL | Video URL | Video URL