Catalyst: #BiasCorrect by Burns Group

Catalyst, a global non-profit focused on creating workplaces that work for women, is marking International Women’s Day (IWD) by launching a bold campaign to tackle the issue of unconscious gender bias. The multi-faceted campaign, created by Burns Group, a NYC-based brand transformation company, aims to shine a light on the power of words and inspire people to #BiasCorrect by paying more attention to theirs.

Burns Group leveraged Catalyst’s leading research on gender bias to create an integrated technology play and multi-faceted advertising campaign spanning Slack, social, OOH and digital. The campaign creates real change through the launch of the first #BiasCorrect Plug-In for Slack, to tag unconscious bias in real-time conversations during work-based chat. The plug-in identifies 25 words, and replaces them with suggested, unbiased words. For instance, if a woman is described as “aggressive” the app corrects the sentiment to “assertive.”

Beyond the technology, the human side of the campaign features women from diverse industries - including Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg, Sallie Krawcheck, among others - and the words that have been used to describe them, with an associated #BiasCorrect word. Anyone can upload their own photos on www.catalyst.org/biascorrect, and create images of themselves with the same overlay to be shared with the hashtag, #BiasCorrect across their social channels.