In a powerful online film, we asked women to start weighing what really matters – their life accomplishments – in lieu of their bodies.

The #WeighThis film opens on a scale in the middle of a grand hall. The question “What do you weigh?” appears on the screen as women apprehensively approach it. After being told that they are to speak on their accomplishments rather than weigh themselves, they are visibly relieved.

The women describe the things they are proud of: What they’ve done, where they’ve gone, the people in their lives. The examples build to an emotional climax. Text appears on screen asking women: “If you’re going to weigh something, weigh what matters.” We then see women triumphantly place symbols of their accomplishments on the scale as viewers are then invited to share in social media how they would like to be weighed with the hashtag #WeighThis.

We launched the #WeighThis video June 2015 on Lean Cuisine’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels asking women to weigh the things in life that truly matter more than the number on a scale. And, we encouraged women to share the ways in which they would like to be weighed using the hashtag #WeighThis. Within one week, the video garnered more than 6 million views and thousands of responses.

With a response so great, we wanted to continue the conversation in social and memorialize what women around the world shared. So, we commissioned a popular female artist to illustrate comments received on actual scales and built an enormous installation inside New York City’s Grand Central Station.

From this effort a second #WeighThis film was born, which we launched on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on New Year’s Day – a time when resolutions by and large center on diet and weight loss.

#WeighThis was an integral part of Lean Cuisine’s holistic turnaround strategy and largely contributed to the brand seeing its first sales increase in six years despite nearly a 56% decline in media spend year-over-year. And since the original #WeighThis video launched, the brand has seen 41 straight weeks of positive year-over-year sales.

The film was an instant and viral success, contributing to a 33% increase in positive brand perception, and reducing share of negative conversations to 4%, from the previous year’s share of 25%.

Just as important, Lean Cuisine started an open dialogue for women around weighing what matters in life.

For more information, visit www.awardmaterial.com/WeighThis

Through social segmentation of the Lean Cuisine consumer and brand perception analysis, we discovered Lean Cuisine conversations were functional and lacking emotional relevance.

Further, through our research we saw the brand’s core female target was leading an accomplished life, but facing a society that continued to only judge her by her appearance.

With these insights as our key drivers, we set off on a mission to change the conversation around health and wellness, and promote conversation around Lean Cuisine as a brand that is about more than just dieting. We needed to inspire women everywhere to weigh themselves differently and begin authentic discussions about weight and value perception. While other brands tapping into female empowerment focused on what women struggled with (confidence, appearance), we focused on what women were proud of.

In 2015, Lean Cuisine embarked on a brand and product overhaul across all touchpoints – from infusing the products with new flavors and benefits, to new packaging, a new TV campaign and a redesigned website.

But that wasn’t enough. Lean Cuisine’s core consumer is a busy, accomplished woman – a woman who often has to deprioritize her own wellness to make room for the other aspects of her life. A woman who accomplishes great things every day, yet is still so often judged not by these accomplishments, but by her appearance. Lean Cuisine wanted to be a part of a larger cultural conversation going against this notion of focusing only on appearance, empowering women to weigh what truly matters.

As Lean Cuisine needed help shifting its perception in digital, our objective was to generate emotional social conversation to highlight the brand's new positioning, and ultimately drive sales for the product.