#ThisLittleGirlIsme proves relevant as the creative idea became a viral success, seeded organically through high profile women including Annie Lennox, Arianna Huffington, Billie Jean King, Diane Russet, Lillee Jean and Melinda Gates. The idea of posting a photo as a girl and sharing ambitions, dreams, doubts and advice to give your younger self, resonated with our female audience and the ‘throwback’ culture, reflections and positivity of social media. A diverse range of stories were shared of women overcoming adversity, across different topics from wellbeing to careers. LinkedIn stated the campaign created the most “buzz” in the history of the platform.

Girls are still affected by a lack of confidence and ingrained gender stereotypes. Girls experience a 30% drop in confidence between the ages of 8-14, which can limit their educational and career choices. We therefore asked women all over the world to share a photo of themselves on social media as a little girl alongside their ambitions, dreams, doubts and advice they would give their younger self.

To inspire girls worldwide, we connect them with a diverse range of female role models from all backgrounds, professions and countries. Research from The Female Lead shows that 93% of girls felt they had higher personal and career aspirations after following inspirational women on social media. (Disrupting the Feed, 2019).

The overall objective of our campaign was to increase the presence of female role models on social media so that girls have access to a range of women who can help empower them.

To mark International Day of the Girl, we asked women to post pictures of themselves as a girl on social media, share their ambitions at that age and advice they would give their younger selves. Women from all walks of life shared #ThisLittleGirlIsMe stories and the campaign went viral across the globe for girls to discover inspiring journeys, as they set off on their own path. The campaign was to be huge drive for women's self reflection and self-celebration to inspire aspirations for the next generation.

Ana Botin would tell her younger self to learn from mistakes you make. Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden advises not to let anyone ever tell you your dreams are out of reach. Martina Navratilova would tell her younger self that it’s okay to ask for help and if Billie Jean King could go back in time, she’d tell herself to “dream big and go for it."

We gathered a number of research statistics from a variety of sources including:

The Female Lead Research, 2020

The Confidence Code For Girls, Ypulse, 2018

Girls’ Attitudes Survey, 2020

The results from each research source clearly demonstrate that young girls lack awareness of the magnitude of possibilities they have in life and that real life role models play a critical role in breaking down gender stereotypes.

Our target audience of the campaign ranged from ‘Role models’ who were women worldwide aged 24+ and teens/young adults who were women/girls worldwide aged 13-23.

The virality of the campaign idea made it relevant to every social media platform despite Instagram being the focus, it particularly generated interest on LinkedIn with an average of 10k impressions each day during the campaign period. The reflections from women’s experiences and advice lent itself to the social media community and for other women to take notice.

The implementation phase involved re-posting and creating ‘then and now’ posts of the participants to ensure they could be identified easily as well as curating engaging, static, animated and video content to encourage participation with the campaign and sharing stories with the hashtag #ThisLittleGirlIsMe.

The campaign kicked off going live on 13th September and the last official day of the campaign was 11th October 2021 to mark and celebrate International Day of the Girl, a key day that is a big focus for our organisation each year.

Regarding the placement of the campaign, we used organic social media through user generated content.

As a campaign that has never been done before, it managed to reach a global scale having a huge presence across our network of 23 country teams at the time, spanning Latin America, United States, Europe, Middle East & North Africa and Asia Pacific regions.

The impact of the campaign certainly surpassed our targets. Our social media in particular had huge success in growing our following from 7K to 10.5K throughout the campaign. We reached 20.2M Instagram accounts, made 2.7M impressions across LinkedIn and Instagram and had an Instagram engagement rate of 80%.

As a non-profit organisation, we rely on funding from partner organisations and with the exposure of our campaign online, particularly across LinkedIn, we saw heightened engagement and interest from global organisations keen to get involved in the work we do to empower girls worldwide. Google and BNY Mellon Investment Banking are among the key global organisations that became aware of our organisation through the #ThisLittleGirlIsMe campaign. Since then, BNY Mellon has signed a global partnership contract to provide funding and to deliver financial literacy workshops to empower the girls we work with across the network to consider a career in finance.

Improving the future for girls improves everyone’s future, but girls are still affected by a chronic lack of confidence and ingrained gender stereotypes. Girls experience a 30% drop in confidence between the ages of 8-14, which can limit their educational and career choices.

Role models are instrumental in breaking down stereotypes and addressing the confidence gap which teenage girls experience. Two thirds of girls express that talking to women role models inspired them to consider a broader range of career options. Therefore, the importance of raising visibility and access to a range of diverse women role models is integral to changing the future for girls worldwide.

Social media undoubtedly plays a big part in many teens' lives. The pandemic resulted in user growth dramatically increasing and as the negative impact of covid-19 halted the progress of gender equality, the pandemic became one of the main factors behind the digital campaign.