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Orange’s “WoMen’s Football” ad, which went viral for highlighting gender bias in soccer, has won the Entertainment for Sport Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, marking a cultural moment in the rise of women’s sports and the caliber of marketing behind it.
The film from the French telecommunications company and agency Marcel Paris was expected to win big at Cannes after it scored a coveted black Pencil at the D&AD Awards in May. Their recognition also comes as sports brands and events, particularly those focused on women’s sports, have a larger presence at this year’s festival, including Stagwell’s Sport Beach and the inaugural Women’s Sports House from agency Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment and Axios.
Beyond Cannes, Orange’s win is notable because it “highlights the excitement and future of women’s sports marketing and underscores the power of positivity and creativity in changing perceptions and celebrating athletic excellence,” said Louise Johnson, CEO of Fuse and jury president of the Entertainment Lions for Sport.
The campaign is part of a wider trend of women’s sports finally receiving more recognition, wider audiences and bigger marketing efforts, with many of the latter “moving away from just a parity story to creative storytelling,” Johnson added.
ADWEEK spoke to the creators of the groundbreaking ad, Marcel’s joint CEOs and CCOs Youri Guerassimov and Gaëtan du Peloux, about how they pulled it off and why it matters.
Correcting bias
Orange, a longtime sponsor of the French Football Federation, tasked Marcel with bringing attention to the women’s national team and “making people interested in this event, knowing there is a lot of bias,” Peloux said.
The brand launched its ad three weeks before the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup. At that time, none of the major French TV channels were planning to broadcast the tournament–underscoring the need to correct such biases.
“There was this perception that nobody’s watching,” said Peloux.
Marcel set out to prove the elite level of the women’s game with a clever visual trick.
The team edited together highlights from women’s games, then trawled through footage from men’s games to find matching shots. Using VFX, they interlaid the men’s movements onto the women’s bodies, correcting the figures frame by frame.
