Social Action Campaigns

SOCIAL ACTION CAMPAIGNS

By Glenn Linstead and James Hart

WHAT IS SOCIAL ACTION? • Social action means taking steps to change the things that are wrong in our society and introducing new ideas and processes for doing things better in the future. • Social Action campaigns can be done about any topic that people are passionate about or that people want a change to that certain topic. Many social action campaigns are aimed around trying to change social attitudes or trying to change laws about different topics such as littering or voting.

Social Action campaigns can have local, national or global effects.

DOVE CHOOSE BEAUTIFUL CAMPAIGN

PURPOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN • The purpose of this campaign is change the attitudes of women and build their self-confidence. These doors were set up in San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi, London and Sao Paulo. It was then up to the women to make the choice between walking through the Beautiful door or the Average door.

• These women were then interviewed about their choice and some of them regretted their choices but the rest of them believed they choice the right one because they weren’t pretty enough to be “Beautiful”.

• This campaign has branched into social media by using the #ChooseBeautiful to get women to complement themselves.

STATISTICS • Primary Data: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7PB7NMD We had 10 responses for all the questions

STATISTICS • Secondary Data: • How many women told us they felt anxious about the way they look? Get ready for some disheartening stats: • 61% in the US • 86% in China • 56% in India (where almost all of the women we spoke to agreed that every woman has something beautiful about her, but that often they don’t see it in themselves) • a huge 96% in the UK • and 72% in Brazil. http://www.dove.com/uk/stories/campaigns/choose-beautiful.html

CRITICISM • Many critics have pointed out that Dove is simply skimming the surface of beauty and self-esteem — two concepts Dove claims to understand and advocate for.

• One argument against the company's Choose Beautiful ad is that women don't necessarily have to feel beautiful to have high self-esteem. And instead of giving women two superficial choices, Dove could have added several qualities — such as Funny, Intelligent, Unique or Kind.

• However Dove have approached the situation carefully because they have chosen “Beautiful” and “Average” instead of using words such as “Ugly” or “Unattractive”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj JQBjWYDTs

#LIKE A GIRL CAMPAIGN (JAY) • The campaign stemmed from the fact that gender stereotypes are to imbedded into our culture to the point that its part of our language • The campaign highlighted the issue that “like a girl” was and is being used in a derogatory way. The purpose of the campaign was to change it from being an insult to it being a term of empowerment therefore aiming to change attitudes • Always created a social experiment, holding a fake casting call with young girls, boys, men and women. They asked them to do things “like a girl” • Campaign was constructed in a way spread the message that “like a girl” is a phrase that is meaningful and powerful and that everyone should embrace.

• Social hashtag #likeagirl was introduced to unite people to spark the conversation of the phrase and to change the meaning of “like a girl” to something positive • Always issued a study that showed that 76% of young women between the ages of 16 -24 said they no longer saw “like a girl” as an insult. Two out three men said that they would think twice before using the phrase as an insult

• Nine out of 10 (88 per cent) UK girls feel pressure to conform to how girls 'are supposed to feel and act', • UK, 84 per cent of girls said they felt that society puts them into 'boxes' and that this had a negative impact on their lives. Fifty-nine per cent said that girls lose confidence at puberty. And 69 per cent believe that girls would be more confident if society stopped pressuring them

JAMES’ CAMPAIGN • http://stduckingsmith.tumblr.com/post/142999526704/time-to-change

COMPARISON • The similarity is the concept of the Dove Beauty Campaign people rated themselves “average” so they don’t have a high self esteem and the Time to Change campaign is about mental health which can be people with depression over their appearance or people being self-conscious.

• The other similarity is that Dove and Always #LikeAGirl campaign both are aimed at women and building their self esteem or changing the attitudes towards women.

• The difference between the two campaigns are that one is campaigning for change in all mental health where as Dove are campaigning for the change in women’s attitudes towards themselves.