To address the gender bias in the financial industry, and the impact it has in all aspects of women’s lives, we needed to start a conversation that no one was having. We had to bring the cultural impacts to light, generate awareness around the prevalence of the ingrained stereotypes and microaggressions, and create increased engagement on the topic.

Our goals would not be met through a more traditional media plan. We needed shareable content to generate awareness and carefully selected social influencers to engage their followers for the conversation to truly begin.

Bank of Montreal (BMO) was seeking to establish a new purpose-driven brand, positioning itself as a bank that uses financial services as a force for good. Support for women’s initiatives was a key part of BMO’s new strategy, as the bank has a strong history of championing women’s advancement– from their long-standing support of women-led businesses to achieving over 40% female leadership within the bank.

Our goal was to launch BMO’s new purpose-driven brand through the lens of female empowerment for International Women’s Day, in order to build brand affinity and engagement in a category that consumers tend to tune out.

We set out to fight gender bias in the financial system by addressing the root causes of women’s financial disempowerment. Today, only 31% of women believe they’re financially knowledgeable; the financial industry has long acknowledged women’s lack of confidence, but our goal was to finally address the underlying cause.

Financial Fairness is a campaign that chronicles one woman’s experiences with negative cultural programming and its end result. This story told every woman’s story.

The campaign launched with the film ‘Jane’s Story’, which showed how a lifetime of negative stereotyping erodes a woman’s confidence with money. The story spotlights seemingly small and harmless moments to demonstrate their cumulative impact on Jane. She leaves financial planning to her husband and faces financial insecurity as a result. But rather than ending there, the video flips the script, showing that if we can #bankruptthebias we can help dismantle the myth that women are bad with money and build women’s confidence.

Short-format videos also highlighted these labels in a social-first way, and the campaign was amplified by women financial influencers.

Women control 40% of global wealth, but their financial confidence hasn’t kept pace. Women have been culturally primed to believe that they don’t have the knowledge to manage their financial decisions. 55% of female investors believe they know less than the average investor, compared to only 27% of male investors. A lack of financial engagement leaves women vulnerable: women are 80% more likely to retire in poverty.

Women aren’t inherently less confident or competent with money, they’re just conditioned to feel that way. From “retail therapy” to “marry rich,” women are surrounded by a cultural narrative that paints them as reckless, incapable, and inferior around finances. The more society tells women they’re bad with money, the more they believe it.

Most women experience financial bias, but few are aware of the impact. So we had to reveal this cycle of cultural conditioning in order to close the financial confidence gap.

Our campaign launched on International Women’s Day with the film, ‘Jane’s Story’, to heighten awareness of biased language and its impact on women’s financial confidence. Additional short-format videos exposed biased labels, driving to our content hub, bmoforwomen.com/ourcommitment, to learn more about this unconscious but harmful bias.

Our message was amplified by a coalition of female financial influencers, Mrs. Dow Jones, The Fiscal Femme, and Jamila Souffrant, who shared Jane’s story to drive organic engagement with their followers.

The second phase rewrote the biased cultural narrative that women encounter. We rewrote labels with a series of GIFs that re-appropriate biased language. And to advocate for real, lasting change, we created a petition to remove biased language from dictionaries.

Finally, we rewrote the model of a financial expert. We launched the Chief Allowance Officer, making a young girl BMO’s financial expert who taught other girls financial basics with online videos.

This purpose-driven initiative created a connection in a low-engagement category by bringing a cultural issue to light, revealing a critical need for change. By challenging the cultural inequity of women’s financial confidence, BMO built an emotionally charged campaign that dominated the conversation on International Women’s Day. We far exceeded our goals; increasing brand reach and recall with over 90MM impressions.

Brand Reach and Recall:

· +19.8 pts (compared to financial norm of +6.1)

· 90MM+ impressions

· 50MM views of Jane videos

Brand Favourability:

· +7.1 pts (compared to financial norm of +0.7 pts).

· 99.3% positive/neutral social sentiment

Brand Engagement:

· Drove 83,400 customers to BMOForWomen.com, a 348% increase in visits compared to our campaign objective

· 42% of users spent more than 15 seconds on the campaign’s content page, up from 33% during last year’s campaign

· 109% increase in the use of #BMOforWomen compared to 2019 campaign

The conversation that Financial Fairness has begun is the first step in addressing the gender bias in the financial system. We needed our work to be shared on social to increase the number of people discussing the issue at hand.

Without the social and influencer aspects of the campaign we would not have generated the awareness or dialogue to create the required change. Our work highlighted a number of examples that have created and perpetuate this unconscious gender bias and drove people to our content hub for further learning of the issue and BMO’s initiatives and commitment to creating change.