ABOUT

A BRAND’S TRIBUTE TO SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN THAT INSPIRED A PRESIDENT’S SPEECH

On Women's Day in South Africa, Gillette began a PR campaign around a brand film called "Nozizwe," that honours the brave South African women raising young men on their own. That same day, the President of South Africa mentioned the film in his speech to the nation.

OBJECTIVE:
Women’s Day is the day South Africa honors our women & Gillette was going to give them a perfect tool to do so.The idea was to give South Africans a piece of content that they can share every year on social media, thanking the women & grandmothers in their life who raised them. The idea was to make Gillette synonymous with Women’s Day.

IDEA

The film for Gillette South Africa brings to life Gillette’s global crusade to celebrate “The Best a Man can Be” in a uniquely South African context. Gillette has celebrated the relationship between fathers and sons for years. But in South Africa, two out of three children are raised without their father.

“Nozizwe” is an emotive film that introduces a young South African man whose grandmother, Nozizwe, has raised him over the years. Featuring a real grandmother and grandson from Cape Town, it looks at how strong South African women are bringing up a new generation of South African men to be the best they can be. The film explodes traditional notions about masculinity and what it means to be a father by introducing us to an exemplary young man whose only father figure has been a woman. We activated the film on Women’s Day by getting it covered on the country’s national media, using influencers on social media, and with an always-on war room of community managers to amplify the engagement online

RESULTS

Garnering the highest praise, His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa included the piece in his 2019 Women’s Day speech to the nation. MarkLives, the biggest marketing journalist in South Africa, reported on the film while, internationally, UNICEF recognised it on Twitter. Online, having spent just 0.13$MM, the work enjoyed a reach of 12.9MM, 27MM impressions, a 17.7% view-through rate, 285M organic clicks, and, of 1.8M responses, a 96% positive sentiment. We reached 5.5 million people in 72 hours. The film recorded 528 000 social engagements as well as half a million organic views on YouTube in less than a month.