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Women’s Work, Saatchi enter Cannes with campaign that never ran

A collective of female Kiwi photographers, Women’s Work, admit you won’t have seen their campaign before seeing their case study – because it never ran.

It’s a calculated approach to get the Collective’s message directly in the faces of agencies and creative departments. 

The case study film features the previously unseen campaign of 24 posters highlighting the fact that of all the photography used in advertising, less than 15 percent is shot by women. 

It then calls out agencies, asking them to start consciously putting female photographers on their future shortlists. 

Woman’s Work Creative Director, Victoria Baldwin, says: “We’ve calculated that less than 15 percent of photographers in advertising are women. But realistically, the percentage globally is probably less than half that. 

“We asked Saatchi & Saatchi to help promote our talented New Zealand women photographers. They however suggested going bigger by using this opportunity to highlight this global issue of unconscious bias to the world, and so The Case Study Project was born.”

Steve Cochran, CCO at Saatchi & Saatchi, Women’s Work’s partner agency says: “Our deliberate and transparent ambition for this campaign is to enter into Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in order to get our message directly in front of the creative community’s most influential leaders. In, what might sound very meta, our case study about our ads is actually our ad.

“Some might say creating a case study about ads that never ran to enter into an award show is a bit cynical or bending rules. But we think there’s poetic irony in using an unseen advertising campaign featuring women’s photography to highlight that fact women’s photography in advertising is just that – relatively unseen.”

Kristal Knight, CD at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand says: “Our global CCO, Kate Stanners, has advocated for all Saatchi & Saatchi offices around the world to make women a consideration on any pitch list, both photographers and directors. 

“So The Case Study Project is about challenging ourselves and every other agency to do that. Yes, we’ve called out numerous globally renowned agencies with a blatant shot-gun approach to purely get attention and provoke – but what we are really looking to do here is to create real, tangible change.”

The Case Study Project has been released online before the Cannes deadline to ensure it qualifies as a piece of work in itself.

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