Greengrass Consulting and O2 get men to tweet their feet in #WalkTheTalk gender equality campaign
Greengrass Consulting and O2 brought to life their #WalkTheTalk social campaign to help men get involved in the gender equality conversation. Tasking men to remove their socks and shoes and posting a photo of their feet on Twitter, the campaign hoped to shine a light on the treatment of prime minister Theresa May when she came to power earlier this year.
Walk The Talk social campaign
Marina Lumley, founding partner of Greengrass Consulting, worked at the heart of the campaign all day asking both people at the Do It Day event and online to #WalkTheTalk. However the campaign had started a while back with a 40 second ad being filmed in preparation for the event.
“The reality was that was too complicated to get off the ground,” Lumley explains. “That was an extra idea but what we like was the primary idea of tweeting your feet. I’d love to think the Haribo ad is something we can do, there has been so many companies offering to help us and I’d love to think there is an opportunity for us to create that and sew more content into the mix.”
The ad, created and aired by STV, included Bing Ads vice president, Axel Steinman, MCA chief executive, Alan Leaman and various other industry leaders discussing why they want to Walk The Talk. Aviva’s director of UK public policy, Will McDonald, said: “If our children grow up seeing gender equality in action, they’ll take it for granted. Now wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing.”
Throughout the day, the team emailed a variety of personal contacts asking them to get involved as well as referencing those shortlisted for The Drum’s Social Buzz Awards in the hope they would tweet their feet.
When discussing the experience Lumley reflected on the day: “Today has totally exceeded my expectations. It has been a fantastic environment and those helping with the challenge are doing an incredible job. We have tried to stay true to the idea but it has all been a truly great experience.
“We are still going to count the feet but the people that have been supporting the campaign are doing an incredible job.”
At the start of the day, the team set themselves a target of 2016 pairs of feet to be tweeted however by half way through the day they changed that and aimed to receive over 100 feet. The men in the team spent their day walking around in their socks sparking conversation Lumley said: “Like everything we really want more. We want 100 feet but we’re at 60. Of course we really want to hit our actually target of 2016, but 100 will do us nicely today.”
Delighted to support #WalkTheTalk Let’s prove you can stand for gender equality no matter what shoes you wear. #DoItDay @TheDrum pic.twitter.com/vQ2JDSOCH0
— Gordon Young (@TheDrumChief) November 10, 2016
Tweet your feet, cause it's not about the kitten heels you wear but what you stand for that counts! #walkthetalk #DoitDay pic.twitter.com/0C27Q2umNU — STV Creative (@STVCreative) November 10, 2016
Monster is sharing a photo of its feet to stand up for #genderequality at work today. Tweet your feet #walkthetalk #DoitDay pic.twitter.com/u90F6ndSWa — Monster (@TheJobMonster) November 10, 2016
Token Man supports #walkthetalk. Delighted to have so many Token men who are standing up for gender equality pic.twitter.com/QrpDX9kaqU — Token Man (@Token_man) November 10, 2016
With just over 100 tweets, the team managed to hit their goal however , Greengrass Consulting plan to continue the stunt over the next few days, and potentially year, to try and reach the original target of 2016.
Check out how The Drum's other Do It Day challenges faired here.