UN Women examines lagging gender equality in new campaign from The Monkeys
UN Women Australia has contrasted the lagging progress towards gender equality with the society’s fast technological advancement in a new campaign created by The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song, and produced by FINCH.
The World Economic Forum currently predicts it will take 135.6 years to close the global gender gap, a number that has only increased due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in halting progress towards gender parity across several economies and industries. With robo-farms, humans walking on Mars, and a Moon colony all predicted to happened within this time, Un Women has posed that space isn’t our final frontier, gender equality is.
‘Equality: Our Final Frontier’ is an eerie, animated film that urges Australians to examine the timeline for gender equality as we fall behind.
The one and a half minute spot shows a woman leaving a protest march in 2022 and walking through a future that changes in every area except gender equality. The film was directed by award-winning Motion design director Jonny Kofoed from film collective Assembly, who used AI animation techniques to transform live action footage into animation, placing a real woman into an otherworldly, imagined future. Kofoed used existing and emerging technology, as well as real projections, to visualise the incredible milestones humans are currently expected to reach before gender equality.
UN Women Australia CEO Simone Clarke said: “In an age where technological advancements have unlocked the answers to some of the biggest challenges of our time, it’s incomprehensible to me that gender equality ‘might’ exist somewhere in the future. The future for women is now, and we can’t afford to wait any longer. We need to Act Now and make gender equality a reality in OUR lifetime.”
Chief creative officer of The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song, Tara Ford added: “Providing some real- world reference points of advancements in technology and humanity shows just how absurd (and horrifying) it is to have gender equality pegged for even further into the future. Unbelievably it’s now predicted equality will not be seen for another four generations. We hope our campaign inspires action not just contemplation.”
Created by The Monkeys, the campaign was supported by UM and Edelman Australia, with media generously donated by partners including Seven Network, Nine Network, Network 10, JC Decaux, Southern Cross Austereo, Mamamia, VM Cinema, oOh! Media, QMS, NOVA Entertainment, Running Boards, Hyped Media, Meta and TikTok.
Credits
Client: UN Women Australia
CEO: Simone Clarke
Advisor: Sunita Gloster
Creative Agency: The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song
Group CEO and Co-Founder: Mark Green
Group Chief Creative Officer: Tara Ford
Group Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder: Scott Nowell
Managing Director: Matt Michael
Chief Client Officer: Belinda Drew
Executive Creative Director: Barbara Humphries
Head of Innovation: Beth O’Brien
Copywriter: Lizzie Wood
Art Director: Katie Kidd, Aicha Wijland
Business Director: Lisa Zimpel
Senior Business Manager: Isabella Chidson
Planning Director: Charlotte Marshall
Social Strategist: Charlotte Goodsir
Head of Production: Penny Brown
Senior Producer: Kaija Wall
Producer: Cathryn Cooper
Executive Digital Producer: Tamara Wohl
Designer OOH & Social: Eva Godney, Mel Watson & Eimear Moroney
Creative Solutions Lead: Emma Moore
Production Company: FINCH
Director: Assembly, Jonny Kofoed
Executive Producer: Assembly, Jane Oak
Managing Director: Corey Esse
Executive Producer: Loren Bradley
Producer: Duncan Bernard
Music: Rumble Studios
Composer: Adam Moses
Music EP: Michael Gie
Sound Design: Massive Music
EP/MP: Kat Aquilla
Sound Engineer: Abby Sie & Simon Kane
Media Agency: UM
PR Agency: Edelman