L'Oréal Paris Brings the Paywall Down to Liberate Access to News Reports on Harassment Against Women

Part of the StandUp movement, Paywall Down sponsored the reading of reports on the topic in the main titles of Marie Claire, Glamour, GQ, Vogue and O Globo.

"The more you know, the easier it is to fight harassment." It was with this motto that L'Oréal Paris sponsored in Brazil, for three months, the reading of articles that contained harassment as a central theme. Created by WMcCann, the Paywall Down liberated access for readers to the main titles of Editora Globo and Globo Condé Nast – O GLOBO newspaper and Marie Claire, Glamour, GQ and Vogue magazines. The results were exponential: a 2,611% increase in pageviews on articles on the topic, 300% of which only in GQ magazine, mostly aimed at the male audience.

According to a survey released by the University of Oxford, in 2021, thirty-four million Brazilians do not have access to local journalism. In addition, the study The Truth About a Well World, carried out by McCann Worldgroup, mapped that 90% of Brazilians have already encountered disinformation on social networks. With the aim of providing access to information to readers in general and educating people on the topic, which is considered the #1 problem faced by women and girls worldwide according to Ipsos data, the action increased by 122 million new accesses to the sites and totalled more than 25 million impressions in total.

"We are satisfied with the results. Not because of the numbers, but because of what it represents: thousands of people have access to an issue of extreme importance for women and girls across the country and that helps everyone understand the reality and take action. faced with a situation like this. L'Oréal Paris understands the need to circulate information to help combat harassment in public spaces, which is not always easy to identify. As a world-leading female brand, we need to educate and inform, this is also our role", says Laura Parkinson, director of L'Oréal Paris in Brazil.

The initiative is part of the global awareness movement “StandUp: against harassment in the streets”, which carries out anti-harassment training developed in partnership with the American NGO Hollaback, recognised for projects and research related to the theme.

"The StandUp campaign was entirely developed with the aim of interrupting a dynamic that we are experiencing extremely harmful, which is that we do not intervene in situations of harassment. The idea of ​​Paywall Down was born precisely in this tune: to propose an awareness of society, helping in the dissemination of information, news and materials that contribute to a transformative movement and a more empathetic society”, comments Luiza Portella, strategic planning director at WMcCann.

Launched in October 2021 in Brazil, the program offers free training with a method based on the 5 Ds - distract, delegate, document, direct and dialogue, and has already completed the training to more than 706,000 people. The objective is to help men and women, witnesses or victims, to intervene safely in situations of harassment. Access here.