In an industry where progress often moves at a frustratingly slow pace, Jennifer (Jenny) Hayashi and Precious McCarthy are challenging the status quo with She Says, We Act—a campaign built to accelerate action on gender equality.
As Creative Directors for SheSays’ 2025 International Women’s Day initiative, they set out to do more than just spark conversation. They wanted to rally allies, particularly men, to step up in tangible ways. What followed was a bold, community-driven movement that didn’t just call for change—it made it impossible to ignore.
What was the brief?
The brief was to make an impact on this year’s IWD with a campaign that would align with both the 2025 SheSays mission statement ‘Holding Ground and Holding Space’ (for ourselves and others) and the International Women’s Day theme of ‘Accelerate Action’.
SheSays wanted to engage more people, particularly men, in becoming the kind of allies that take tangible steps towards gender equality in the workplace. - Jennifer Hayashi and Precious McCarthy
What was the process behind ideating the concept?
We went through a ton of executions before finalising our campaign. The process of elimination was really helpful. Just getting everything down on paper and being able to speak about the different ideas we had helped us to understand collectively what we wanted to achieve with this campaign.
As time went on, we went for the clearest idea, with the biggest impact that we could all rally around. We’ve got so many brilliant ideas for the future and how we can really support our allies and fight for gender equality. It’s sometimes about fitting the right idea to the right time and keeping some back for later. - Jenny Hayashi
What was the biggest challenge during production? How did you overcome it?
As a volunteer organisation, the biggest challenge faced during production was co-ordinating people’s time around other commitments like work, childcare, holidays, illnesses and general life. But as a team we made it work because of the collective belief in the campaign - we all just wanted to produce meaningful work that would be impactful not only in the workplace, but in wider society also. - Precious McCarthy
What kit/tools/software were used to create the project?
We used Adobe creative suite, as well as hand drawing all of our IWD rally placards. Cardboard & paint goes a long way when you have something you need to achieve, fast. - Jennifer Hayashi
What is one funny or notable thing that happened during production?
We held a mini-ally rally where our team had placards that said “Allies Wanted” and other campaign messaging. We were chatting A-L-L-Y whilst taking photos, and a lovely man thought it was for Allan, so he approached us to say hi. Allan did indeed confirm that he was an Ally. Bonus points. Thanks Allan. - Jenny Hayashi
What’s the main message of this project and why does it matter?
The main campaign message is that in order to achieve gender equality in our lifetimes, it’s going to take all of us becoming active allies. While often framed as a ‘women’s issue’, gender inequality is an ‘everyone issue’. One that can no longer be carried solely on the backs of some women and non-binary people.
From parental leave, pay, progression and more in the workplace, these inequalities are deeply impacting all of our lives on a personal as well as professional level. Women and non-binary people are exiting the creative industries at an alarming rate according to data from Major Players.
While data from the World Economic Forum tells us that it’s going to take until 2158 until we reach gender equality. So unless all of us, especially men, start taking an active role, things are going to continue as they are for a very long time. - Precious McCarthy
How long did it take from inception to delivery?
The campaign took around 4 weeks from inception to delivery and was all done remotely until we met for our ally-rally stunt. - Jennifer Hayashi and Precious McCarthy
Can you describe the creative spark or inspiration behind the initial concept? Was there a specific moment or insight that ignited the idea?
It was really a mix of insights that helped spark the campaign. The first from research conducted by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London.
It stated that 66% of the British public think that we won’t achieve gender equality in our lifetime without the help of men. While the other came from a 2024 report by Ipsos, where they found that nearly 50% of the British public think that women’s equality has gone far enough.
These stats not only showed us the importance of encouraging more men to support gender equality, it also demonstrated the importance of making sure this was a continuous campaign — as clearly there is still a lot of work needed to change the hearts and minds of our audience. - Precious McCarthy
When we stripped back IWD into its pure essence, over 100 years ago men and women rallied together to fight for women's rights to work. All of our insights and history is telling us that we need to work together to make equality happen. - Jenny Hayashi
How did you ensure that the concept aligned with the brand's values, goals, and target audience?
SheSays is an organisation that is all about championing the rights of women and non-binary people who work in the creative industries. And so while we wanted to recruit as many new allies as possible, particularly men, our challenge was — how do we keep women and non-binary people at the centre while also not excluding men?
Our solution was to ensure gender inclusivity throughout the campaign in language and messaging. We wanted to be clear that this was not an attempt to single out any one gender. Instead, we aimed to unite us all into focussing on one common goal.
Where we had messaging targeted at a specific gender, it was important that we coupled it with data or stats that spurred action without shaming. Especially when it came to engaging with our male allies. - Precious McCarthy
Can you discuss any collaborative or interdisciplinary aspects of the ideation process, such as working with other departments or external partners?
We worked with our long standing partners Major Players while preparing the campaign. As the main execution was the job ad on LinkedIn, they were really helpful in providing us with best practices when it came to creating the ad.
Especially with the job market being what it is, it was really important that we made it clear that we were recruiting for an unpaid and volunteer allyship role and not a conventional salaried role. They also shared with us insights from their 2025 salary census preliminary findings, which were really helpful in shaping the campaign. - Precious McCarthy
How did you ensure that the concept remained innovative and stood out in a crowded marketplace?
International Women’s Day is always crowded, so we needed to be a bit disruptive. Of course there was one space we knew our campaign would stand out; LinkedIn. We’re currently seeing a shift on this platform from corporate and functional to more social and storytelling, but whilst social-first campaigns have become a buzzword in industry, very few people are making LinkedIn-first campaigns.
Usually a space of individualism and self promotion, we flipped the script to make a suite of LinkedIn assets about collective action and taking a stand for others. We built community into the foundations - to the point where the campaign did not work without their engagement.
From our audience to tagging people from their personal network who ‘should apply for the role’, to long standing ally and sponsor Major Players putting out our recruitment post on their official channels, to new allies posting a proud ‘I’m an ally’ post that actually made a difference - every aspect of this campaign allowed our community to disrupt the platform with us. Jennifer Hayashi
What do you hope it achieves for the brand?
The campaign has garnered us a huge amount of sign-ups from new active allies, as well as contributions to our ‘allyship in the workplace’ toolkit so far. As this will be a continuous effort from the SheSays team, what we hope to achieve for the brand is a growing number of new allies (especially male ones) attending events and other activities associated with the campaign. This’ll mean that finally we can all start working together to create the change needed to achieve gender equality. - Precious McCarthy
Credit list for the work
Creative Directors - Jennifer (Jenny) Hayashi and Precious McCarthy
Executive Creative Directors - Mikaela Dragon and Ruby Norman-Curran
Senior Creatives - Joyce Kremer, Melissa Wong
Senior Producer - Zan Stepien
PR & Comms Lead – Charlotte Read
Strategy Director - Jo Bromilow
Brand & Motion Designer - Den Salazar
Designer – Katarzyna Wozniak
Photographer - Ben Peter Catchpole
Website - Jennifer Vobis
Newsletter - Jennifer Ho
Team support and art - Anastasia Beltyukova
Social - Ritika Saini
With support from the SheSays Board, Laura Jordan Bambach, Alessandra Lariu, and our allies