Catalyst Case Study | Brand Consultancy | Burns Group

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Catalyst

From Respected to Awe Inspiring

Unconscious gender bias is still one of the biggest, invisible barriers for women’s advancement in the workplace. Catalyst, the leading global non-profit focuses on creating workplaces that work for women. Starting in 2019, Burns Group worked with Catalyst to to launch a bold campaign on International Women’s Day (IWD). The multi-faceted campaign aimed to shine a light on the power of words and inspire people to #BiasCorrect by paying more attention to theirs.

CHALLENGE

Gender bias is so ingrained in society that it’s almost automatic, meaning even the most progressive among us can be guilty of it. The good news is once you learn how to identify your own unconscious bias, you can make a conscious choice to work against it. That’s why Burns Group created the #BiasCorrect Plug-In—a tool that helps you spot your own unconscious bias in everyday conversations, biases that are stopping women from achieving equality at work.

SOLUTION

Burns Group broke through the clutter of International Women’s Day with practically no media budget, creating a gender equality movement for Catalyst, with the world’s first #BiasCorrect Plug-In for Slack. This was no fleeting stunt - we leveraged technology and human stories with concrete tools for combating bias long term. Pre-launch we enrolled 60 boss ladies (from Hillary Clinton to Sheryl Sandberg to Sallie Krawcheck and more) to kick off the campaign as our primary "media" channel, ultimately garnering more than 185 million estimated impressions, culminating in being named one of the top 5 IWD efforts by Campaign US.