As one of the leading Polish news portals, Gazeta.pl debates political and cultural issues daily and, not afraid of controversy, continually initiates and progresses conversations. Gazeta.pl is owned by the largest, most influential, liberal publisher in Poland who sees its role far beyond just delivering the news.

In place since 2015, Poland’s autocratic government has demonstrated on many occasions their will to subordinate women: they banned over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill, they threatened draconian new restrictions on abortion and claimed that gender discrimination in Poland does not exist.

Movements like #MeToo have put the issues of gender equality and sexism front and centre globally. In Poland these movements were also visible but the impact of them were limited – still most of Polish people do not feel they are a part of inequality culture and that these issues affect their lives. We felt it was time to change that.

Our goal was ambitious, to start a conversation that would engage the whole country to establish gender inequality and sexism as issues everyone would have to reckon with; and to truly change the narrative around women in Poland.

‘Gender’ doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In Poland, gender issues have been linked in complicated ways to politics, national history, and economic processes. To this day, women’s issues are viewed with suspicion as an import, something supposedly threatening Poland’s traditional culture.

In Poland, everyday sexism is still acceptable, women are marginalised and patronised in most public forums, and schools don’t offer sexual education. And since 2015, the right-wing government, led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, has worked closely with the Catholic Church to enforce a heteronormative Catholic family model and do away with women’s reproductive rights.

For most people, including the progressive westernised middle class, gender issues still feel abstract. To create lasting change, we had to create something that would challenge everyone, anchor gender issues in everyday life and make them as mainstream as the oldest adult magazine in the country.

For 27 years, “Your Weekend” – one of Poland longest running and most read adult magazine - reduced women to sex objects. In December 2018, when it was up for sale, we bought it immediately.

And used it to challenge the culture of sexism and gender inequality it had contributed to building. We transformed “Your Weekend” in a conversation-sparking, ground-breaking magazine promoting diverse and progressive narratives of femininity.

We teamed up Gazeta.pl, our client and leading Polish news portal, with Mastercard and BNP Paribas, two brands with a long-term commitment to empower women, to create this last issue.

We published it on International Women’s Day. We kept the regular sections and columns but reimagined the content around sexual education, gender portrayal, equal rights, sexism and more. It was the symbolic end of an era and a spectacular beginning for a much-needed national conversation.

The main assumption was to make the topic mainstream. That is why we have decided to target the campaign to middle class Polish men. People we wanted to engage were not rejecting the topic, but thought that it that sexism isn’t their problem or their doing. We didn’t want to judge anyone or to instruct. We wanted to make them realize that they were brought up with a biased perspective on women because of titles such as “Your Weekend” and lack of proper education in schools.

A teaser campaign started a week before the launch creating excitement about the iconic magazine’s last ever issue.

Nationwide offline and online sales were launched on 2019 International Women’s Day. Gazeta.pl sold “The Last Ever Issue” through their publisher’s distribution networks such as Empik (a chain of 200+ bookstores), Relay/Inmedio/1 Minute (chain of 1000+ newsagents / convenience stores), publio.pl and kulturalnysklep.pl (online platforms owned by the publisher).

Sales were supported by an integrated campaign including OOH, cinemas, radio, social media and PR. 100+ copies of the magazine were sent out to journalists and influencers which ignited a fierce social media debate.

A content section was created at gazeta.pl. It publishes content related to sexism, equality and diverse narratives of feminism. This content is redistributed through the media channels of what used to be an objectifying adult magazine.

Our most impressive result is... 0. That’s the exact amount of impressions of “Your Weekend’s” objectifying content since 08/03/2019.

The campaign organically reached 4.5M people and generated 25M media impressions (Poland’s adult population is c.a. 28M) according to media monitoring services.

“The Last Ever Issue” content generated 500k+ visits to gazeta.pl - a 50% increase in their daily traffic.

The campaign was mentioned by Poland’s most influential TV shows “Pytanie na Sniadanie” and “Szklo Kontaktowe”. It was even featured as the main story on gazeta.pl’s biggest competitor’s news site - onet.pl.

The online edition of the magazine was the best selling e-magazine in Poland of March 2019.

Projected offline sales make it the best selling issue of “Your Weekend” in 10 years.

But most of all, we transformed a vehicle for objectifying women into a platform for empowerment and