Road to APPIES APAC 2022: More Freedom In Job-Hunting Hair – APAC Effie Awards 2021 GOLD Winner

“More freedom in job-hunting hair” is one of the esteemed GOLD winners of the APAC Effie Awards this year.

The Gold winning campaign for Pantene, a brand of Procter & Gamble, was created by Grey Tokyo.

Besides winning Gold, the campaign clinched the titles for Brand of the Year, tied with Tourism New Zealand, as well as Marketer of the Year (Procter & Gamble).

Campaign Synopsis

Pantene Japan and Grey Tokyo launched the next movement of the “#HairWeGo: My Hair Moves Me Forward” campaign, taking up the challenge against the unspoken rule of ‘job hunting hairstyle’ to the next level, in Japan.

Japanese job seekers are pressured into conformity, which is often observed through their black hair, pulled up into a tight ponytail. This makes Job hunting an obvious display of the symbol of uniformity.

Pantene (P&G) first launched the “#More Freedom in Job Hunting Hair” project in 2018, featuring a compilation of honest and straightfoward opinions from 1000 job seekers in commercials and videos.

Plenty of buzz was generated not only among job seekers, but in society overall, creating conversations across various media and social platforms.

This year, based on a survey that Pantene carried out on 300 human resource professionals, they found that 78% of the respondents voiced out their hope for more freedom in job hunting hairstyles.

However, they weren’t quite sure how one could make this happen. With this in mind, as an initiative to empower others to take a step forward, Pantene collaborated with government departments and corporate companies to co-create the diversified job-hunting hairstyle project.

The project features actual employees from the (supporting) companies in out-of-home and newspaper ads, showing a wide variety of hairstyles, to encourage job seekers to be their authentic selves.

The film was also distributed as a TVC and on social media platforms such as Twitter.

Source: Adobo Magazine

APPIES Asia Pacific 2022 is happening in Malaysia!

Submissions Deadline: 15 November 2021

Announcement of Finalists: 29 December 2021

Judging & Presentations: 25 & 26 January 2022

Winners Announcement: 22 February 2022

https://appies.asia

Download the entry kit here.

Submit your entry here.

APPIES Asia Pacific is an annual event that presents a rare opportunity for creative, media, digital and marketing agencies or brands to present their best campaigns to the industry.