A year ago, the Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos came to us with the challenge of raising awareness about gender equality among young Portuguese people with an art contest. So, we rolled up our sleeves and got a move on.

First things first: it all starts with the brand.

As gender equality is an issue that must be addressed continuously, we needed to create a brand that could mirror the personality, the message, and the values we wanted to get across among our target audience. We needed a brand that could last over time and be more than the visual identity of an art contest.

Our first challenge was to come up with a name that was simple, intelligent, and that was as straightforward as possible. So, we made an internal focus group with several options, and the choice was pretty much unanimous:

igualigual

This concept presumes equality and balance. We used alliteration with a mnemonic to create a simple equation that should be repeated until exhaustion. Why? Because we have not yet achieved gender equality, so everyone should repeat it until they understand that there are no different rights, different opportunities, different salaries between genders.

Next step: the logo. Our clients wanted the logo to be modern, youthful, and versatile.

But before that, it was essential to understand our target rather than assume their preferences. That’s why we created a survey which was distributed to several young people within Matosinhos so we could learn their visual choices, their favorite social media channels, and their interests.

After analyzing all the data, we concluded that we were very close to the visual aesthetics that most pleased our target.

Having considered all the options, the logo featuring the symbol “=”and a typographic part with the Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos’s highly readable font was agreed upon as the most effective for the brand goals.

Besides that, it’s a dynamic logo where the logo icon (=) switches position depending on the context in which it’s used. The color palette included purple, pink, orange, yellow, and aqua green as they looked good in both print and digital presentations.

The art contest consisted of submitting any form of art (poem, painting, illustration, music, among others) that represented the competitor’s thoughts about the stereotypes rooted in our society. Regarding the awards, there were two: the audience award and the jury award.

By defining the contest rules, things started to shape up! And we’re super excited to start designing our digital campaign.

At this stage of the game, we needed to start answering some questions, being the main one: How are we going to attract young people to enroll in an art contest about gender equality during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Our strategy to reach our target audience was through a social media campaign inspired by offensive Portuguese proverbs that were, and still are, used daily in Portugal.

But let’s not forget that our target audience were teenagers and young adults, so our copy had to set a connection with them. That’s why at the end of each sentence, we added a teen slang term: Só que não (in English: Said no one ever.) in the hashtag format: #sqn. In the end, we rewrote the sentence into one that wasn’t offensive.

Using a millennial aesthetic, we shared these quotes on the brand’s Instagram and Facebook.

After determining the concept, it’s was about time to start delineating a plan to increase our message’s reach and social media engagement. That’s why we decided to invite three influencers to join our cause: Juliana Rocha (ex-boxer and criminologist), Diogo Faro (comedian), and Clara Não (illustrator).

By associating these influencers with a share like-minded values and tone of voice, we could speak to a very targeted audience that was likely to engage with our content.

On top of that, the niche community of these influencers demonstrated a high level of loyalty and engagement, which was essential to assure not only a high level of awareness but also as many contest submissions as possible.

They partnered with us to create a mix of YouTube videos and interviews, Instagram posts, Instagram Stories, and Facebook posts to help spread the word.

In July, we launched our project that combined a landing page, display ads, search, video, and social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube to fuel this gender equality campaign.

Regarding our social media content, we had two goals:

• Promoting and raising awareness of gender equality through Portuguese sayings and interviews with our influencers.

• Ensure the largest number of entries in the contest through influencers’ stories, promo videos, and posts about the art contest details.

After closing the submissions, we shared all the submitted works on the brand’s Instagram so our audience could vote in their favorite ones. The post with the most likes won the audience award.

This voting format was very successful as all participants shared their work on their profiles, which led to an increase in followers, reach, and interaction on our page.

The success of influencer marketing to help igualigual has surpassed its initial goals as we reached over 1.7 million people and received 69 applications.

And because gender equality is a never-ending fight, the campaign’s landing page will be live year-round, as the main goal is to keep housing different related campaigns.

Check all the contest competitors here and the winners here and here.