“Everyone would like to go back twenty years. Afghan women don’t “. The slogan is simple, the image, a woman first with her face visible and then covered by the burqa, powerful. She is even more so in light of the latest news arrived over the weekend: in Afghanistan women will have to wear the burqa in public with a step back to more than twenty years ago.
The campaign born in a single day and which sets a day of change, that of 14 August 2021 with the Western withdrawal and the return of the Taliban to power, is based on this concept of going back in time. WPP, a leading company in marketing and communication services, did so in collaboration with the Pangea Onlus Foundation through the local project Winspire, an initiative that brings together the various agencies of the group in favor of activities related to Women Empowerment and DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
“We wanted to do something useful and tangible. Not the usual donation, the choice was to put our skills and talents at the service of something concrete: he is a pebble in a gigantic pond, but he can still move something “he explains Simona Maggini, Country Manager of WPP in Italy.
“Our attitude towards the gender gap and inclusion is always constructive, but here we are talking about women fighting for survival. As always the group’s approach is Walk the Talk, do before speaking. We wanted to do something useful and tangible. A day in which a group of WPP professionals produced communication projects and created awarenessawareness and awareness of the situation of Afghan women “she adds.
Pangea Onlus, a non-profit organization that has been working since 2002 to promote the economic and social development of women, their families and surrounding communities, explained its activities. The group (people with different skills and professionalism including art, copy, account, strategist, digital and media specialist, media intelligence, martech specialist, motion designer) worked at the WPP Campus in Milan on the day of Bootcamp. “We have tried to create a message grafted into the current context of the post-pandemic in which everyone wants to return to normalcy as before, to life as before. We say that everyone would like to go back to twenty years ago, Afghan women do not. “
The digital campaign is online starting from Monday 9 May, for about two weeks, it is simple from the point of view of the verbal message, with a disruptive visual game. “In its extreme truth it is the necessary message to give. Complexity would have diluted its strength“. The campaign is web and social, the fastest way and with greater ease and cost-effectiveness of content production. «It has no commercial or visibility purposes, the aim was to help: it is a message of conscience and commitment. Supporting initiatives and associations that promote the inclusion of women and the socio-economic development of underrepresented communities is one of our fundamental values », explains Simona Maggini, talking about similar projects made with female start-ups.
“Our initiative, which we will certainly repeat, must be combined with that of others. Everything must be thought of in a progressive and repetitive perspective: it’s a little effort compared to what these women suffer. In this case there is no competition between agencies, more messages and campaigns would be pieces of the same project doing as good as we can, at an industry level “.
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Source: Vanity Fair
