Girls Who Code promoted offline activism with an online march

With over 41% of Gen Z posting their political thoughts on social media, it’s clear that activism is very much alive and well among this young generation.

However, while Gen Z is clearly more interested in activism than ever, especially when it comes to helping each other, offline participation has its challenges. They are limited to where they live, where they can go, and sometimes for what and for whom they can stand.

The strategy

With #MarchForSisterhood, we aimed to bridge the gap between online and offline activism while inspiring girls to educate and empower each other on how sisterhood can create change.

The campaign was the first ever digital march, where girls and allies could participate from anywhere in the world to bring global awareness to any of the issues about which they care most, simply by submitting a march video with #MarchForSisterhood.

The for girls by girls, #MarchForSisterhood brought together Gen Z leaders to mobilize their communities in sisterhood to help each other in their fights for immigration rights, period poverty, gender equity in tech, climate change and more.

The campaign

On Day of the Girl, girls and allies took to social with videos of themselves marching for the causes in which they believe. From the streets of Capitol Hill, to the schools of Malaysia and Puerto Rico, to the beaches of Mexico, to the marble halls of Dubai and beyond, girls from all over the world digitally marched through a series of video and still imagery shared across social media.

We demonstrated the impact of sisterhood in real time while introducing Girls Who Code to new audiences across interests and industries. The UGC-driven campaign was a massive success with nearly 1 billion campaign impressions and over 255,000 hashtag mentions from around the world.

Notable participants included Chelsea Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg, Kerry Washington, Connie Britton, Amy Schumer, Rosario Dawson and Lizzo. #MarchForSisterhood was a trending on Twitter in New York, earning coverage on Refinery29, ABC News, AdWeek, Good Morning America, Bustle, Mashable and more.

#MarchForSisterhood was led by 38 young activists known as The Leadership Council. These leaders were supported by 64 Gen Z girls that created the community, Team Sisterhood; together, these 102 girls (nano, micro and macro influencers in their own right), united to build momentum for girls across the world to digitally march on October 11, 2019: Day of The Girl.

The results

The campaign trended on Twitter in New York and was covered by ABC News and AdWeek.

Other highlights included:

• 100 Million Impressions (exceeded goal by 627% with 727,290,185 Impressions).
• 10,000 UGC (exceeded goal by 2453% with 255,335 mentions).
• 225 Assets Created: a hero video, IGTV, IG Stories, GIFs, and a landing page.
• 255,000+ hashtag mentions.
• 2M+ video views across Girls Who Codes owned social channels and paid media.
• 658M+ in TikTok views.
• 14M+ impressions across owned channels.
• 1.58M impressions from high-profile participation.
• 13.68k+ new followers across owned channels (up +1.87%).
• 255k+ #MarchForSisterhood mentions.

This project was highly commended at The Drum Marketing Awards US 2020. To find out which Drum Awards are currently open for entries, click here.