Case study · Education
Academia is one of the worst sectors for gender equality in senior roles. For International Women’s Day 2019, Emerald Publishing wanted to say so, and to champion the women changing it. We found and filmed three of their stories and built a four-week social campaign around them. It drove 5,500 visits to the campaign landing page.
- 5.5K landing page visits
- 1.3M impressions
- 190K video views
- 9,077 engagements
- Client Emerald Publishing
- Sector Academic publishing, higher education
- Services Social media campaign, video, content
- When Four weeks around International Women’s Day 2019
- Audience Academics and researchers
- Channels Paid and organic social, campaign landing page
What did Emerald need?
Emerald Publishing is a long-standing advocate of women in publishing and research. The data on academia is stark: old-fashioned, male-biased systems hold back women’s careers.
Emerald wanted to use International Women’s Day to take a stand, and be seen as the publisher that understands the issue.
- Business objective: build Emerald’s reputation with the academic community it publishes for.
- Communication objective: celebrate women in academia leading change over four weeks around International Women’s Day, and drive academics to a landing page of material designed to spark debate.
What was the insight?
Statistics about inequality are easy to scroll past. A colleague describing what happened to her is not.
So we let the women tell it. The idea was three real stories, filmed outside the lecture hall.
What did we do?
- A call for stories. Working with Emerald’s network, we asked academics who had overcome gender barriers at work to come forward.
- A two-stage audition. We shortlisted and auditioned the responses to find three diverse hero stories.
- Filmed differently. We shot each story in a non-academic setting and a dynamic style, so it stood out in a feed.
- A targeted social campaign. Paid and organic social ran for four weeks around International Women’s Day, driving to a landing page of material to spark debate.
What did it achieve?
Results by stage of the AMEC evaluation framework, with the source for each figure.
| Stage | Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outputs | Impressions | 1.3M | Social platform analytics |
| Out-takes | Video views | 190,000 | Social platform analytics |
| Out-takes | Engagements | 9,077 | Social platform analytics |
| Outcomes | Visits to the campaign landing page | 5,500 | Emerald web analytics |
What did Emerald get from it?
A clear stance on an issue its audience cares about, backed by real voices. The campaign put Emerald’s name to the conversation about women in academia and sent thousands of academics to its content.
What did we learn?
- Find the story first. Auditioning for stories took time, but it gave us films people wanted to watch.
- Make it look unlike the sector. Filming away from campus helped the videos stand out.
- What we would do differently. set up tracking beyond the landing page, so we can show what visitors went on to read, download or submit.
