Broadcast News is one of the most heavily consumed content on national broadcast, which still leads all media channels in Pakistan, and is treated as a form of entertainment. In a first-ever media move, we utilized broadcast news to deliver a powerful and disruptive message by hijacking the news outlet itself.

Women in Pakistan are overwhelmingly deprived of their basic right to education. The GlobalGender Gap Report placed the country at 145th rank out of 156. UN Women has stated that 53.6% of women had limited access to education, training, and employment in Pakistan.

There’s a widely held believe that education is useless for women. Due to socioeconomic and cultural reasons, parents keep girls out of school, preferring to have them do housework, or worse – get them married off early.

However, NGOs and companies like EMB have been working tirelessly to promote women’s education. We wanted to demonstrate how empowering girls with education can brighten their future, while also inspiring more parents to send their girls to school.

In a patriarchal society like Pakistan, boys are always seen as more deserving of education since they are most likely to have jobs and succeed. Women are restricted to traditional gender roles like looking after the house and family. We wanted to prove that girls are just as capable as boys when they have access to education.

Rather than talk about the power of education, we decided to demonstrate it in a highly disruptive manner. For one night, schoolgirls, who could not even read three years back, took over as newscasters for the evening, reading the news to millions of people on Pakistan’s three leading news channels.

The girls, wearing their school uniforms, confidently shared their literacy journeys and how it had enabled them to read the news to millions of people in impeccable Urdu and English.

This special broadcast was aired during Human Rights Month, to emphasize Pakistani girls’ right to education.

Our strategy was to demonstrate the future possibilities that education opens for girls, by putting them on national TV, showcasing future career potential, and proving the power of education by having them read on national TV.

Television is the dominant medium in Pakistan with nearly 3⁄4 of the country tuning in to the news every day. Everyone dreams of being on TV. Seeing the schoolgirl broadcasters made the message more impactful.

Pakistanis switched on their TV sets and tuned in to the news one evening only to be greeted by an unusual sight – two schoolgirls, wearing their public school blue and white uniform, sitting in the broadcasters chair and announcing the news.

The girls were filmed on the same set that regular broadcasters used.

The news segment ran on the top three news channels, at the end of which, the girls shared their literacy journeys and how it had enabled them to go from not being able to read three years ago, to reading the news to hundreds of millions of people today.

This special new edition was broadcast on news channels in Pakistan throughout Human Rights Month- December and reached millions of viewers across the country.

Cause results:

Enrollment numbers in 160 schools that EBM was targeting increased to 57% for girls, the primary objective of the campaign.

To realize how substantial an impact this is, consider that according to the latest available figures, the national enrollment averages for schoolchildren in Pakistan are 56% for boys and 44% girls. In effect that shows an increase by an incredible 13 percentage points connected to our campaign when compared to national averages for primary schools.

Brand results:

Since the activation was launched, and due to resulting PR, EBM has increased revenue figures from PKR 82 Billion to becoming the first FMCG brand from Pakistan that surpassed PKR 100 Billion. In the interest of transparency, this of course, is the result of all their marketing, but especially through increasing brand love generated by CSR efforts such as the Schoolgirls campaign.