AmplifyHers/Girls Next Door
Fresh Perspective for a Venerated Company
Starting copywriting at Bose, first thing I thought was “oh, right, those are the speakers my grandpa loves”. I wasn’t alone in this, and Bose knew it. They wanted to appeal to younger, more diverse audiences. A full company overhaul, from the people they hired, to how they gave back to the community.
We were assigned to find new ways for Bose to elevate disadvantaged STEM communities. After months of work, gallons of coffee, and several bad pun titles, we presented our pitch deck to senior leadership. They loved it. Here’s what we did, and how we did it.
AD: Calem Robertson
Strategy: Lili Kobayashi
CD: Karen (Gereffi) Goodman
CD: Cassandra Cruz
Project Girls Next Door
The stories people tell young STEM girls is a lie. They tell them they’re all on their own, outsiders, that there’s no one else like them who wants to do what they do. We thought it was high time that story got shaken up. What if we let young girls build their own narrative, making them insiders instead of outsiders? Partnering with Black Girls Code, we’ll create Project: Girls Next Door. A Metaverse space in Roblox that lets girls learn what they want and be what they want. Together.
AmplifyHers
What if we empowered girls by giving them tech made by them, so they can listen to stories made for them? We decided to bring back Bose Builds, the beloved learning tool that lets kids build their very own speakers. But, with a purpose. Partnering with the Rebel Girls media app, young girls can use their Bose Builds to listen to stories about the hidden figures of STEM. The women who helped revolutionize society, that they never got the chance to hear about before.
The Creative Process
This was our first large scale campaign at Bose. Fortunately Bose’s head creative director, and the global strategy lead helped us cut a path to real, insight-based work. That process is laid out below, from first brief to final presentation.
The Opening Brief
Bose had a problem. Their brand had reach, expertise, and a reputation for top of the line tech. Yet when compared to tech titans like Apple, Bose was also seen as old and out of touch. Headphones for middle-aged white dads. To help change that narrative, Bose decided it was time for new, bold ESG initiatives. Help make the world a better place, and bring out the underrepresented, diverse side of Bose. And we were the ones coming up with that initiative. We received an open brief. The campaign could take any form, but this was not a blue-skies project. What we created had to be realistic, and based off actual inequities that Bose was well-positioned to solve.
Deep Research
The key to any good campaign is massive, staggering amounts of valuable research. We wanted to learn everything about how and why young black women get into STEAM, and the barriers that exist to push them out. We interviewed adult POC engineers, inside and outside of Bose. We trawled social media boards, hearing from people on Instagram, TikTok and Reddit. We listened, recorded, and eventually consolidated the most striking takeaways from the people we learned from.
Brainstorming Insights
Final Stakeholder Presentation
Creative Review
After gathering research, our next step was brainstorming an insight to build our campaigns around. This insight would be the “so what?” of our campaigns. A real world discovery that hooks the audience fast. We came up 10 different tidbits, ran them by our creative directors, then developed three. Of those three, we picked the one that resonated with us the most (bottom right), and moved on to the campaigns.
Even when we think we have a zinger, sometimes the ideas just don’t work out. While creative review is placed in this point of the process, the invaluable dialogue between us and our creative directors infused the entire campaign building process. The slides here are some of the “just okay”s that our CD’s ended up talking us out of.
Once we scoped in on our two campaigns, we rehearsed our pitch presentation thoroughly. Then, it was finally showtime. We presented our ideas to the C-suite at Bose, explaining our insight and the campaigns we built around it. When we finished, the first question they asked us was “which of these two do you favor because we can’t decide which is better.” Of course, that’s the same as picking a favorite child, so we left the meeting with an agreement from C-suite to develop both ideas further.