The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive, has won the Ad Campaign of the Year Award for its ‘When Will She be Right?’ campaign for UN Women Australia.
The agency accepted the award at the virtual AdNews Agency of the Year Awards this afternoon.
Chief Creative Officer Tara Ford: "Nobody wants their daughters and granddaughters of the future to face the same inequalities that women face today. So we are thrilled to win this award for a piece of work that focuses on this very important issue."
The campaign was launched in March 2021 to rally the country to get behind the UN’s goal of achieving equality for women globally by 2030.
The spot hijacks the popular Australian saying, “she’ll be right”, to dismiss problems we think might be fixed in time, turning the motto into an important question of not only how, but also when.
“Tapping Australian male vernacular and creating a cultural turning point on an Australian tragedy to change behaviour through emotional response and surprising facts, this brutally honest and brave campaign hit directly at the heart of the problem — men,” the judges wrote.
The Monkeys said they wanted to highlight that generations of women have been told their conditions are improving.
“They’ve been telling us that forever, and now we knew the reality — every horrible thing that has happened to us or women we know, was going to keep happening, to someone else, again and again, for another 100 years,” the agency said in its submission.
“But Australians, known for their laidback, easygoing attitude, are happy to be apathetic and say ‘it’s getting better’. We even have a phrase for it — if something goes wrong, we just say ‘she’ll be right’.
“It means any old problem will sort itself out with time. It is a wonderfully optimistic phrase, but it can also be a dangerous one. It gives society permission to sweep problems under the rug and absolves them of the responsibility to act.”
Finalists for the Ad Campaign of the Year Award included BMF’s ‘The Great Fresh Food Migration’ for ALDI Australia, CHEP’s ‘Where Babies Come From’ for Genea, and The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive’s ‘Make Lamb, Not Walls’ for Meat & Livestock Australia.
AdNews would like to thank presenting partner TikTok for Business, and supporting partners Amobee, Disney Advertising Sales, Google, Nova Entertainment, PubMatic, Seven, Sightline and Twitch, plus associate partners Adstream, IVE and TVSquared.
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