Do It Like A Girl!

WATCH 'LIKE A GIRL' VIA YOUTUBE - CLICK HERE

Have you seen the latest advertising campaign by Procter and Gamble?! 'Like A Girl' is great. It's simple and it's meaningful and it has all the qualities I have such trouble finding in advertising and media generally these days.  Big thanks to my friend Sal for sharing it with me - you can watch 'Like A Girl' by clicking image caption above or here.

Although the intention of this particular campaign is to peddle P & R and their feminine hygiene range, that's not the obvious all-encompassing point of the ad and the campaign generally. The idea centres around the theme 'Always' which is more of a social media experiment about female empowerment rather than blatant advertising. So it's subtle. There's no blue liquid or cliche teens frolicking happily next to a body of water. (Thank God for that - can we be done with those predictable images now please?!)

Watching this commercial made me think and evaluate, which rarely happens with me and big brand advertising. More importantly though, it highlighted the pleasing notion that there's an ever-growing gulf between the generations past and present and their different perceptions of what it means to be a girl. While I rejoice for this generation of girls who don't even consider that the expressions "running like a girl" or "throwing like a girl" are derogatory terms that promote inequality, it makes me retrospectively lament a little that my own generation used these expressions so freely and therefore in doing so, encouraged a whole lot of negative messages to girls of that time, including me.

Nonetheless, as a Mum of two girls who are from a generation much smarter and more empowered than my own, I watch this commercial filled with joy that some decent playground progress has been made in the journey to change the thinking about girls and their abilities.

Dear P & R - well done. Dear other advertisers - more of these excellent messages, please.

You can read a little more about the campaign, here.