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Groundbreaking Campaigns That Go the Extra Mile to Champion Women
With Nike, Dove, Always, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz
Every Women’s History Month, brands line up to declare their support for women. Some of it lands. A lot of it does not. The difference is rarely about budget or production value. It comes down to something simpler: whether the message is genuinely connected to what the brand actually stands for, or whether it has been assembled for the occasion.
The campaigns that resonate do not feel like a detour. They feel authentic because they are.
I have spent my career measuring how advertising works and what makes it stick. The pattern I see with women-centered campaigns is consistent. The brands getting this right didn’t start by asking how to say something. They started by asking what they actually believed. That’s not a creative brief question. That’s a company values question.
Nike’s “So Win,” which debuted at the Super Bowl last year, is the clearest recent example. Narrated by Doechii over a Led Zeppelin soundtrack and featuring Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Sha’Carri Richardson and others, the spot took every criticism ever leveled at women in sport and turned it into a rallying cry. They can’t fill a stadium. They can’t break records. So win.
It worked not because Nike decided to support women that year, but because supporting female athletes is inseparable from what Nike has always been. It returned to its roots rather than borrowing a cause.
Mercedes-Benz’s “Be One of Many” film, inspired by Luna Fluxa, the youngest and only girl on Mercedes’ Formula 1 Junior Team, challenged something most brands would not dare to touch: the idea that women need to be exceptional just to earn their place. Rather than celebrating her as a first or an only, the campaign asked why those qualifiers are still necessary at all.
The company’s International Women’s Day work this year featured Coco Gauff as a global brand ambassador, and its “Driven by Her” collaboration drew on the story of Bertha Benz, who in 1888 was the first person to drive a car over long distance. The story was already there inside M-B’s history. It just had the sense to tell it.
Microsoft has built one of the most consistent records of championing women in advertising. “Make What’s Next”asked young girls to name a female inventor and watched them struggle, connecting directly to Microsoft’s mission to inspire the next generation.
“Be the One” which ran at the Super Bowl in 2020, told the story of Katie Sowers, the first woman to ever coach in the Big Game, shown using her Microsoft Surface as she ran drills and mapped out plays. All it takes is one, and then it opens the door for so many.
“The Code of Us” continues that thread, sharing stories of women in tech across Microsoft and beyond. What lands across all of it is the same genuine belief, grounded in what Microsoft actually does.
These campaigns did not emerge from nowhere. Dove’s “Real Beauty” argued the standard itself was the problem. Always’ “Like a Girl” reclaimed a phrase used as an insult.
Barbie’s “Dream Gap Project” shone a light on research showing girls as young as six begin to doubt their own brilliance.
P&G’s “Thank You Mom” put women at the center of every great athlete’s story, as the force behind the achievement.
And this Women’s History Month, FIGS’ “Never Change” celebrated women in medicine at a moment when they now make up the majority of the healthcare workforce, with a warmth that could only come from a brand that genuinely knows the people it serves.
What all of these campaigns share is something simpler than a playbook. They each began with something real, a belief the brand already held, an audience it already served, a story already living inside its own history. In every case the brand is not a bystander to the message. It is the hero of it. Inextricably connected to the story of female empowerment it is telling.
The brands that get this right all started in the same place. They asked what they actually believed before they asked how to say it.
