For 65 years, Secret Deodorant has created the best sweat protection for strong women. It illustrated functional product benefits through advertising depicting women as confident and progressive.

As time progressed, so too did Secret’s commitment to supporting women in their endeavors to be “All Strength, No Sweat.” The brand resolved to be more than strong protection and committed to the fight for gender equality through equal representation and equal compensation. Secret made a dedicated shift to connect product plus purpose, as a force for good and a force for growth – using the power of PR, Earned Media, and Influencers.

According to the World Economic Forum, it will require 208+ years of current progress to achieve gender equality in the U.S. This societal inequity carries a quantifiable cost burden of $2 trillion in lost GDP.

In March 2019, the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) filed a game-changing gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The charge demanded equal pay for current and future female athletes and surfaced an opportunity for Secret to impact meaningful change.

U.S. Soccer agrees male and female players are paid differently due to their collective bargaining agreements. Within these structures, a female player winning 20 matches receives 11%. The USWNT has earned four World Cup titles: one second-place finish and three third-place finishes; whereas the men’s team earned more compensation with just one quarterfinal standing.

This comparison is a key pillar of Secret’s campaign for: Equal Work, Equal Sweat, Equal Pay.

Following the USWNT World Cup victory, Secret knew the public would be turning to the The New York Times sports pages – so the Brand published a full-page manifesto in the weekend edition dedicated to the USWNT’s strength and courage of conviction toward equal pay for equal work and equal sweat. Secret pledged $529,000 to the USWNT – $23,000 for each of the 23 players on the world cup winning team – to symbolically shine a light and tangibly lead the way to closing the pay gap.

A strategically choreographed, integrated, surround-sound launch featured a mix of paid media, earned media efforts, influencer content, owned social content and experiential activations to drive wide-spread support around the USWNT’s fight for equal pay.

As a sponsor of U.S. Soccer, Secret was in the rare, apt position to publicly support its players with mass awareness and dedication action. The Brand committed to its purpose and made history by affirming equal work and equal sweat deserve equal pay.

By July 2019, all eyes were on the USWNT’s successful trajectory to the 2019 World Cup, so Secret seized the opportune moment of their World Cup victory to capture public, media and industry attention for the cause. An agile, in-the-moment, purposeful PR strategy cemented Secret as a voice for pay equality in the hours after the game winning goal via a top-tier earned media rollout, charitable donation, strategically-placed print advertisement, and breadth of influencers’ social engagement.

It was a controversial move, but Secret owned the opportunity to be the first and loudest to boldly step up as an advocate and advancer of gender equality.

PR efforts sparked mass coverage in top-tier national and sports media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, Associated Press, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report and Yahoo! Sports.

On July 14, 2019, The New York Times published the brand’s manifesto commitment of $23,000 to each of the 23 players of the USWNT, totaling more than one-half million dollars funded directly to players through the Players Association.

Fifteen key opinion leaders, including equal pay advocates Billie Jean King, Catt Sadler, Sophia Bush and Samira Wiley, athletes Zach Ertz and Abby Wambach and others, shared the news, fueling social shares by Katie Couric and USWNT players Alex Morgan and Allie Long.

Secret continued the news of action by working with the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) to purchase 9,000 tickets to games across the country to boost attendance at games beyond the spotlight of the World Cup.

Editorial coverage volume reached unprecedented heights and became Secret’s biggest editorial moment with 1.2K+ placements garnering 1.3B+ earned reach;

99%+ of placements with campaign messaging, including 50%+ of placements with Secret in headline. The coverage sparked 350K+ social shares, with 173MM in social earned reach and virality.

High-performing, relevant influencer content drove 8.7MM+ views and a 4.2% engagement rate, an increase of +30% more than expected. This was supplemented by 42 organic mentions from KOLs such as Arianna Huffington, Katie Couric, Gayle King, and breaking into pop culture awareness on the Jeopardy game show.

The follow-up NWSL activation drove best-ever results for the brand, including 7.1% engagement rate and 1.6M new follower social acquisition.