By Robert Goldrich

DGA Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield of production house Chelsea Pictures recalled the storyboards she received from Leo Burnett for the social media experiment #LikeAGirl presented by Procter & Gamble’s feminine hygiene brand Always. “It’s the first time I’ve seen a photograph of me on a storyboards cover page,” said Greenfield. Next to the picture was a question asking if Greenfield “directs like a girl?”

“Leo Burnett got me engaged from the very beginning right when they sent me the concept,” said Greenfield who felt both the importance and inherent challenge of a project looking to tackle the negative “Like a girl” stereotype (“you throw like a girl,” “you run like a girl”), which permeates our culture. She was immediately drawn to the global campaign that aimed to helps girls and women feel proud and confident when they do things #LikeAGirl.

Greenfield and Leo Burnett creatives collaborated and developed the social experiment to see how people of all ages interpret the phrase “Like a girl.” The centerpiece viral video captures negative and positive feedback, thus far generating 70 million-plus views and resonating with its target audience and beyond.

“In my work as a documentarian, I have witnessed the confidence crisis among girls and the negative impact of stereotypes first-hand,” said Greenfield. “When the words ‘like a girl’ are used to mean something bad, it is profoundly disempowering. I am proud to partner with Always to shed light on how this simple phrase can have a significant and long-lasting impact on girls and women. I am excited to be a part of the movement to redefine ‘like a girl’ into a positive affirmation.”

Always invited girls and women everywhere to join the movement and share what they proudly do #LikeAGirl. They were encouraged to Tweet, take a picture, shoot a video or send a message to take a stand and show young girls everywhere that doing things #LikeAGirl should never be used as an insult–that it instead means being strong, talented and downright amazing.

Last week the #LikeAGirl initiative won the Grand CLIO Award for Public Relations (Brand Development). Additionally #LikeAGirl took home six CLIO Awards–two Gold CLIOS, one for Engagement, the other for Public Relations (Corporate Image); Silver CLIOS in the categories of Direct (Film), Digital/Social (Social Media) and Branded Entertainment & Content; and a Bronze in Direct (Digital/Social).

Greenfield is no stranger to the awards show circuit–for both her short and long-form fare. On the latter score, The Queen of Versailles earned her a DGA Award nomination in 2013 for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. A year earlier, Queen of Versailles won the Best Documentary Directing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where it also was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. This marked the second time a Greenfield feature was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, the first coming in 2006 for her documentary directorial debut, Thin. Later, Thin garnered Greenfield a primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming.

SHOOT: What was the genesis of the #LikeAGirl campaign? How did you become involved?

Greenfield: Leo Burnett came to me with the idea. Before directing documentary films and commercials, I was a photographer who spent time working on gender and body image. I did a photography book called Girl Culture which came out in 2002. A related fine art exhibition traveled around the world exploring the role of the body and its impact on one’s sense of identity–from girls to young women.

I later came out with a book called Thin along with a photography exhibition which took a journey into the world of eating disorders. From this sprung a documentary, Thin [nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and earning a primetime Emmy nomination for Best Directing for Nonfiction Programming]. I think the creatives at Leo Burnett took note of this early work and saw me as someone who could explore and help develop a campaign based on the phrase “Like a girl.”

SHOOT: What attracted you to the Always campaign?

Greenfield: I’m always drawn to the opportunity to break down, deconstruct and look at things around us–such as the phrase “Like a girl”–that we don’t see clearly because they are like the air we breathe.  The creatives at Leo Burnett were open to collaborating with me and developing a social experiment. They gave me the license to figure out how to do this in an authentic and documentary-based way.

The casting process entailed interviewing several hundred girls, women, boys and men about what “Like a girl” meant. That was kind of the research part of it before we pared it down to those who we thought would contribute the most to the film, keeping in mind to have a diverse cross-section of people and a diversity of responses. The creatives at Leo Burnett let me help them to figure out how to best explore the phrase and what it means–and how to do it in the time frame of an ad campaign, which is quite different from a documentary feature or putting five years into a book. It took a big vision on the part of the agency.

Also, P&G had to sign off on something with no guarantee as to how it would turn out. There was no script. We didn’t know what people would say before they said it. This was a huge leap of faith for the client. But the Leo Burnett creatives Judy John and AJ Hassan shared my belief that in the context of real testimony we could do justice to an important initiative and story. That’s what I love to do–to create a space where you can be ready for discovery and the unexpected.

During our casting process, we didn’t want the people we called in to know what the campaign was about. We were afraid that knowledge could affect their feedback. So we asked them to show me what it was like to crawl like a baby or run like a grandpa. We didn’t give away what we were looking for. When it came to the filming day, we just had gut feelings about the people we selected. As it turns out they all had amazing backstories which made their interviews feel more layered and profound. For example, we cast a man because he so played out the stereotype of a prejudiced guy. When we talked further, he owned it. That’s how he felt. But he also noted that his sister is a sheriff who carries a gun and she would “kick my ass if she knew what I was saying.”

There was also the woman who asked why can’t being a girl mean winning the race. But at the same time, she really embraced extreme stereotypes of girls and was denigrating in her depiction of running like a girl. She had no consciousness of it. That’s how girls run, she said. I asked her where she saw girls run that way–and do all girls run that way? She said they do unless they are professionally trained. I followed up, asking her what she meant. It turns out she had run a marathon. She ended up in tears. She made fun of girls because she wasn’t like the other girls she knew.

Everybody is guilty of stereotyping. I asked my two boys at home about running like a girl. They were over the top in term of showing how girls run–flailing arms, squealing. Yet they both live in a household with a feminist mother.

It was a revelation for me to see how deeply people have been affected. When I grew up, my parents kind of treated me like a boy. I never felt the sting of the “like a girl” insult. I wasn’t an athlete. Since the campaign came out, I’ve gotten so much feedback from women who were devastated by the stereotyping. There was a woman who ran a math camp. She was hurt by the “like a girl” insult. So she devoted herself to teaching math to girls.

SHOOT: What did you learn from the success of this campaign?

Greenfield: The key was that the creatives from Leo Burnett, like Judy and AJ, set the tone of the project. This was a serious mission that they really cared about. It was not just an ad or just a project or just a job to anybody. Now maybe that was in part because there were many women involved and this subject hits close to home for them. For whatever reason, everybody felt personally engaged and vested in it. For me, I have spent a lot of time in the trenches of the subject. We all believed in it.

I certainly think that this campaign shows the power of women’s voices and the power of listening to those voices. And I hope more advertisers are taking notice that women are a huge part of the buying market and that their voices can speak powerfully in this world.

This campaign also brought home the power of storytelling, the need to create meaningful content that’s worth people’s time. What’s affirming about this work is not only the message about girls but also the importance of sponsoring authentic storytelling.

SHOOT: What’s next for you?

Greenfield: I’m in a Sundance lab working on a documentary which I’m not yet at liberty to discuss publicly.

I am also working on a book and an exhibition about wealth and the American dream. The exhibition is scheduled to open in Los Angeles in 2016.

And I am looking to fit commercials into my schedule. I very much enjoy directing commercials.

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