Background

While 40% of athletes are women, they get less than 10% of the sports media coverage.

As the auto brand with the largest percentage of female owners—56.1%— and longtime sponsors of the NCAA, Buick decided to do something about it.

The task was to create a campaign that would engage with our consumers by shedding a light on this discrepancy and ultimately raise visibility for female athletes.

The greater objective was to embrace this narrative as Buick’s brand story, showing our commitment to a cause that’s important to our brand and our consumers.

Idea / Insights

How did we get people to want to see women’s sports? Simple. By not showing them.

To demonstrate how little visibility female athletes get, we created a campaign featuring the greatest moments in women’s sports, which people couldn’t see. We launched with a TV spot, where we crafted an immersive surround sound experience that made people want to see the plays, but all they saw was a QR code and a super:

“On April 18, Arike Ogunbowale hit one of the greatest shots in NCAA history. But you probably didn’t see it. While 40% of athletes are women, they get less than 10% of the media coverage…”

The QR code took them to a landing page where they could see the moments they missed, creating a unique interaction with the medium.

The campaign included 3 TV spots, social videos, influencers, a TikTok challenge, digital and print, and an event.

Strategy

Our primary target was women, 30-45 years old.

We didn’t want to create another campaign showing female athletes doing incredible things. We’ve seen enough; we already know what they’re capable of. We needed to show that despite their amazing abilities, women still get significantly less media coverage than men.

So, our strategy was to demonstrate this lack of visibility, and we wanted to bring it to life in a way that hadn’t been done before.

Execution

SEE HER GREATNESS was a multi-platform, integrated campaign.

Since we’re tackling inequality in sports coverage, we launched with a series of TV spots during one of the biggest sports moments of the year—March Madness. And to make sure we garnered mass awareness, we launched our hashtag #SeeHerGreatness in a Twitter trend takeover on March 12.

As the hashtag gained momentum, we kicked off the #SeeHerGreatness TikTok Challenge, March 19-21, where we encouraged women to share their own greatness.

For social media, we created custom videos, where we only showed 10% of the screen to capture people’s attention and symbolize the lack of coverage.

Additionally, we utilized high impact takeovers across CBS Sports & Bleacher Report to catch consumers attention, and promoted an on-site Huddle experience with TogethXr at the Women’s Final Four in Minneapolis.

The campaign ran until the end of the tournament on April 4.

Results

The campaign no one could see ended up bringing historic visibility to women’s sports:

+ 497 million impressions

+ 7.2 billion interactions with #SeeHerGreatness

+ 1.9 million branded videos created on TikTok

The most shared campaign in the history of the brand.

Shared organically by top members of the sports media and top female athletes, including Serena Williams and Sue Bird.

ESPN changed the Women’s NCAA final to prime time.

The game became the most watched Women's NCAA Final in nearly 2 decades.

Role: Creator and Creative Direction

Awards

CANNES

1 Bronze

CLIO

2 Silvers

5 Bronzes

1 Shortlist

ANDYs

1 Gold

Webby Awards

People's Voice Winner

1 Nomination

1 Honor

DShow

1 Best of Show

5 Golds

NY Festivals

1 Silver, 1 Bronze and 2 Shortlists

D&AD

2 Shortlists

The One Show

1 Merit

AdStars

1 Bronze

6 Crystals