Female athlete. Female director. Female CEO. I built the social activation that asked 110 countries to drop the qualifier.
The insight had to hold in 32 markets and the headline system had to survive languages that don't treat gender the same way. We built both, then handed every market a toolkit so they could make it their own and still have it read as one campaign.
ROLE:
Creative Direction · Art Direction · Social-First Campaign Direction · Strategy · Global Design System · Team Leadership · Production Partner Direction
CLIENT:
Levi’s
AGENCY:
AKQA
SCOPE:
Creative Direction · Art Direction · Social-First Campaign Direction · Strategy · Global Design System · Team Leadership · Production Partner Direction
The problem
Levi's wanted a global social activation to celebrate women's accomplishments. When I came onto the project the strategy sat at exactly that: celebrate women's accomplishments. I asked what kind, and how 32 markets with different cultural norms would hang together without a throughline.
What I did
Found the anchor. The female qualifier marks her as the exception, the version of an achievement rather than the achievement itself. Drop the qualifier and the accomplishment stands on its own. I carried the strategy independently after the strategist rolled off partway through, and set the direction for a headline and design system that flexed to work with any language, which my team built out.
Directed global asset creation. As the global team we crafted the hero assets every market would share. We concepted the kinds of stories we wanted, cast globally for range, and let each woman lead how hers was told. Two were filmed in the US, then several European markets helped us find a local director for a woman in Turkey and another in Russia. Those four became individual films, the women framed as changemakers, alongside an anthem film scored with original commissioned music, plus key visuals and social across four channels.
Directed the playbook. Global films and key visuals, guidelines for creating local assets, and instructions for activating locally. Built for markets to adapt to their own cultures rather than translate.
Turned it loose. The anthem posted first, then the four changemaker films. From there each market ran with the playbook and found its own changemakers, which is how India brought in Raja Kumari without being asked. #IShapeMyWorld held everything together and invited followers to post about their own achievements. Local events even let women use the campaign graphics and write their own headlines.
Pronouns and gendered nouns behave differently market to market, so the headline and design system was built to flex across languages without losing its structure.
Four changemakers, four stories, filmed and designed for social. Myriah Marquez and computer scientist Joy Buolamwini in the US, journalist Melis Alphan in Turkey and music producer Jekka in Russia.
We storyboarded the intent, briefed the director and photographer, approved the production company's set art and shooting treatment, and were on set for the US shoot.
Brand guidelines, style direction, retail and experiential design, in-store thought starters, Instagram stickers, photobooth graphics and criteria for choosing influencers.
Markets ran the activation locally, in store and out of it, on their own changemakers and in their own language.
Followers posted their own achievements under #IShapeMyWorld.
At local events women used the campaign graphics to write their own headlines.
One idea, 32 markets, 110 countries and 50M+ organic impressions.
Every market made it their own and it still read as one campaign.