Hair Has No Gender
Challenge:
Pantene wanted to gain awareness for its brand equity, while incorporating Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) – a key pillar for P&G. The brand believes that hair has power: power to impact on a person’s identity, power to grant self-esteem, and power to build self-confidence.
However, the context in Belgium for certain DEI-related topics remains challenging. For example, while “Being who you want to be” ranks very highly on young people’s value scale today, Belgian society can still be unaccepting of transgender and non-binary people.
Research within the community of transgender and non-binary people – conducted by Ketchum in collaboration with a non-profit association – showed that Belgian society receives a score of only 5.7 out of 10 for acceptance of the LGBTQI+ community. When asked about the biggest challenge for the community in Belgium, lack of knowledge of gender diversity was the top priority, followed by stereotypes and lack of representation.
Solution:
We created a strategy to foster acceptance of the LGBTQI+ community through visibility and role modelling. That involved leveraging an authentic role model from the LGTBQI+ community that fit with the Pantene brand. We looked for a specific brand ambassadorship with scale, preserving credibility by aligning the brand and campaign mission with authentic, tailored storytelling.
Ketchum proactively identified Nora Monsecour to become the first-ever brand ambassador for Pantene in Belgium. Nora is a professional dancer and transgender woman who embodies the battle for acceptance and self-expression. She also transcends the LGBTQI+ community and reaches a broad audience, in part due to being the inspiration for a multi-awarded movie ‘Girl’.
Ketchum saw that Nora instinctively understood the campaign mission and had a deep appreciation of the power that hair can have on identity, societal acceptance, and self-confidence.
Results:
- 6,900,000+ reach across all media – including pick-up from national media and by the biggest TV news broadcaster.
- These figures prove that we created visibility and engagement for Nora’s story – and by extension for the whole transgender and non-binary community – and positioned Pantene as a truly inclusive brand in society.
- 439,000+ influencer reach.
