Branding & Social Media Campaign for SheBiz, an Event introducing High-School Females to Careers in Finance
18/07/21
By Nayla Yehia RGD, Senior Graphic Designer at Women in Capital Markets
CONTEXT
Hosted by WCM since 2012, SheBiz is a half-day event that introduces high school females in Canada to careers in finance. The event comprises sessions and panels with finance professionals and university students to encourage the high schoolers to choose STEM-and finance-related academic pathways.
Due to the pandemic, SheBiz was held remotely in 2020: teachers registered their students and the event was broadcast in classrooms during the second half of the school day. Hence, in addition to students, SheBiz20 needed to be marketed via a campaign to high school teachers and parents through WCM's social media channels.
METHODOLOGY
I needed to find out what visual styles were popular amongst today's high school students. I researched the brands, influencers and icons they were into to draw inspiration for the graphic style and type treatment and animation. Past SheBiz branding entailed a solid version of the fuchsia wordmark along with a dark blue background.
For the SheBiz20 branding, I added the corporate light blue to the colour palette, used an outlined version of the wordmark, which lent itself better to patterning, and combined this with cutout images of diverse attendees from past events framed in solid blocks. Typography that was animated through shifts from solid to outline, in scale and in position, emphasized the messaging that it was a virtual, free, finance-focused event.
RESULT
The SheBiz20 branding allowed for a dynamic manipulation of its individual elements and resulted in an energetic social media campaign. WCM's Instagram account, which attracts most of our student audience, performed best. It saw a boost in profile visits and received 60 new followers — a big leap for the organization — that have been retained ever since. The number of impressions increased, along with student engagement through replying, responding to stories and tagging WCM in their posts.
1400 students were registered for the event in more than 100 schools across 6 major cities in Canada. All in all, a lot of excitement was generated around the event!
TAKEAWAY
While our Instagram account was successful at engaging students and getting them registered, we realized that our presence on TikTok is imperative and are curious to explore its potential for WCM's next SheBiz event.
Credits: Neema Amadala, Director, Marketing and Communications, WCM
Olga Filimonova, previous WCM Senior Graphic Designer
Nayla grew up in Saudi Arabia and moved to her home country, Lebanon, when it was time to go to university. There, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in graphic design at the American University of Beirut. She worked for many years in Lebanon at design and branding studios and as a freelancer with a significant chunk of non-profit clients. She moved to Toronto in 2016, where she worked as an in-house designer in the legaltech, service design and non-profit spaces. She currently works at WCM, a non-profit organization whose mission is equity, diversity and inclusion in the finance industry for people of all genders, 2SLGBTQ+, BIPOC and persons with disabilities. Her role answers to her passions of branding for a cause and gives her the privilege of being part of a mighty team. When not working, you’ll find her cranking out classical pieces on the piano, swimming laps and in the kitchen cooking up vegan deliciousness.Read:
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