They say advertising shapes culture. We thoroughly believe it has the ability to change lives, too.
Never has that been more apparent than in the winners of the Best Ad Campaign: Championing The Equality Cause award at B&T’s Women in Media Awards, presented by Are Media.
With on-time entries closing for this year’s awards on Thursday 25 June (late entries close a week later) we’re taking a look back at the winners of this esteemed award.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
2020 – ‘C’mon Aussie: Revisited’, CommBank, GHO Sydney
Six years ago, GHO Sydney helped CommBank show its support for the under-funded and under-appreciated Australian Women’s Cricket Team.
With Australia hosting the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, CommBank and GHO Sydney set out to raise awareness of its support for women’s cricket, increase brand perception scores, and help fill the MCG for the final on International Women’s Day.
They also aimed to set a world record for attendance at a women’s cricket match—needless to say, the final between Australia and India seated a whopping 86,174 people, who watched the hosts take home the trophy. At the time, it was a record attendance for a women’s cricket match and the sixth most-watched cricket event—men’s or women’s—in history.
In the lead up, the campaign featured executions across TV, social, radio, and in-ground activations. CommBank also launched an extended version of the song on streaming services, with all proceeds going to the McGrath Foundation.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
2021 – ‘When Will She Be Right’, UN Women Australia, The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive
In 2021 The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive (now called Droga5, part of Accenture Song) helped UN Women Australia with its #WhenWillSheBeRight.
The campaign was a huge challenge with no media spend and Australia ranked 44th on The Global Gender Gap Index.
Built around the phrase “she’ll be right”, The Monkeys’ film was designed for socials and was fronted by Indigenous actress Miah Madden who delivered a monologue with confronting statistics to talk to how ‘she’ is still unequal in Australia.
The Monkeys then asked illustrators to interrupt the questions on socials. It caught on and independent artists and members of the public created their own.
The Monkeys then used the artwork to create an OOH campaign, the media listened, and began gifting the campaign additional television spots to support and amplify the campaign. With zero media spend, the campaign generated around an incredible $4 million in earned media.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
2022 – ‘Be The Change’, Fck The Cupcakes, Innocean Australia
In 2022, Innocean flipped the script and turned the camera on men. At the time, Aussie blokes were the second-most likely to agree that “gender inequality doesn’t really exist” – one behind Saudi Arabia according to data from Ipsos.
At the same time, men turned off when presented with gender inequality.
But Innocean used humour to its advantage, turning white papers and interviews into a story this target audience would listen to… a sitcom, using dark humour to disguise everyday misogyny.
It helped men find their voice at every touchpoint with integration, TV, radio, OOH and digital driving to an online hub to great success. The rationale being, if the narrative only targets one gender, it’s not solving the root issue.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
2023 – ‘Equality: Our Final Frontier’, UN Women Australia, The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song
After the 2022 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report revealed that global gender equality was 132 years away — an increase on the 2021 prediction — UN Women Australia wanted to change the fact.
The Monkeys took the chance to contrast the rapid progress we had made making in every field of science and technology with gender equality.
It created an eerie animated film following a young woman as she walks along a timeline into the future, where progress is made in every area except gender equality. Considered typography, integrated into buildings, signs and advertisements, helped signpost milestones elegantly. It concludes in her new home on the moon in 2157, where she’s catcalled from a rocket.
The campaign proved a resounding success. Press coverage reached 6.4 million people, the campaign reached 3.3 million users on TikTok and globally the campaign reached 11 million people.
After the campaign launched, posters were adapted by protestors at women’s rights rallies in Australia following the overturning of Roe v Wade.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
2024 – ‘Til It’s Done’, Football Australia, Ogilvy
The ‘Til It’s Done’ campaign was pivotal in changing perceptions of women’s sports in Australia.
Historically overlooked and underfunded, the Matildas faced significant hurdles, including outdated kits and lacklustre fundraising calendars. The 2023 Women’s World Cup, hosted in Australia and New Zealand, was pivotal to changing this narrative.
The campaign’s core message, ‘Til It’s Done,’ embodied the Tillies’ relentless pursuit of their goals and broader gender equality. It aimed to galvanise national support, increase World Cup viewership and boost women’s football participation. The campaign’s centrepiece was an inspiring film that captured the team’s determination, garnered extensive media coverage and used social videos and outdoor ads to amplify its message.
Following The Matildas’ semi-final loss, an impactful outdoor campaign featured a to-do list highlighting ongoing challenges for women’s sports, which went viral.
The campaign was highly successful, generating over 3.2 million impressions with the hashtag #tilitsdone, achieving a 61 per cent recall rate and a 77 per cent positive rating. It also secured a $200 million funding commitment from the Albanese Government for women’s sports.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
2025 – ‘Banner Ad Changeroom’, Dentsu Creative, The Iconic
The Iconic’s ‘Banner Ad Changeroom’ reimagined one of the most overlooked media formats into a stage for inclusivity, creativity and commerce.
At its core was a simple but powerful idea: let real Australians, of all sizes, ages, backgrounds and abilities, be the faces of fashion, not just models who fit the industry’s narrow mould.
By turning banner ads into live, shoppable fashion shows, the campaign directly responded to the client’s brief to put inclusivity at the heart of the ‘Got You Looking’ brand platform while driving both cultural cut-through and commercial returns.
Executed with precision, the campaign integrated live banners across out of home, social, PR and editorial.
Two custom-built mini studios in Sydney streamed normal, everyday customers into banners across major publishers, with top looks pushed to outdoor ads within hours. This created a seamless loop of participation, visibility and action.
The impact was undeniable: CTR on banners more than tripled and it notched more than 5 million impressions.
The work blurred the lines between content, commerce and community, and proved that inclusivity can do so much more than just tick a box—it gets more items in the shopping bag, too.
SHOWCASE YOUR WORLD-CHANGING WORK AT B&T’S WOMEN IN MEDIA AWARDS, PRESENTED BY ARE MEDIA!
