Havergal College is hoping to lure more parents to send their young daughters to its private school by tapping into one of the areas they struggle with most: confidence.
Toronto-based Havergal, in collaboration with agency Red Lion Canada, has launched a new campaign called #RealGirlThings looking at how girls develop self-confidence.
The campaign centrepiece is an animated video, narrated by the Havergal principal and created using sketches from more than 900 of the school’s students, that talks about how girls are often encouraged by their achievements and less so their efforts.
It suggests that, as a result, girls are less likely to keep trying and master something they find difficult.
“What if all it takes to change the way girls respond to challenges, is to change the way bsi respond to girls?” the video states.
The campaign also focuses on helping girls gain confidence no matter what their background or interests, through education, says Matt Litzinger, president and chief creative officer of Red Lion.
He said the idea was to raise the question: What makes a girl confident?
“What I like about this is that a lot of [female] empowerment, from my perspective anyway, has been used to sell things – whether they’ve been feminine napkins, or a line of clothing, or sports apparel or cereal,” says Litzinger. “To me, this is a little more authentic because it’s talking about how we actually empower young women, which I think should start through education.”
It’s the first creative that Red Lion has done for Havergal after winning the account last fall.
Litzinger says the independent school, which educates girls starting from junior kindergarten through to grade 12, was looking for ways to increase enrolment and instil pride in those who are educated there.
“I think what we came up with was much larger than that,” Litzinger says. “They chose to take a stance on their perspective of confidence.”
“As a school, we were looking to create a platform that was meaningful to our students, that challenged their thinking and encouraged students to explore their authentic selves,” Havergal principal Helen-Kay Davy said in a release. “The ethos of this campaign is all about representing and honouring the diverse and multiple voices of our greatest assets, our students.”
The campaign video is available on YouTube and the school’s website.
Litzinger says the next leg of the campaign will include print, out-of-home and other “inventive tactics” including school programs and more social media.
“This idea of #RealGirlThings is the tip of a much larger iceberg,” Litzinger says.
