Episode 100 - Doja Cat x Girls Who Code DojaCode Ad Reviewed By Microsoft, Red Bull, Vodafone and Mr Cooper
Advertisers Watching Ads checks out Doja Cat’s codable music video, DojaCode, produced in partnership with Girls Who Code.
This ad divided opinion amongst our guests: Vodafone’s Sara Belardi, Mr Cooper’s Teresa Kulupka, Red Bull’s William Galimberti and Microsoft’s Pedro Bojikian.
The creative idea is innovative, striking and beautifully delivered but our guests point out that the full user journey is lacking.
Watch the full ad and see what you think in the latest episode.
Episode 100 - Doja Cat x Girls Who Code DojaCode Ad Reviewed By Microsoft, Red Bull, Vodafone and Mr Cooper
Automated Transcript (it’s not perfect, but you’ll get the idea)
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello and welcome to advertisers watching ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brand’s ads.
My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative and we are brought to you as ever by our partners contagious, or they've helped us choose the ad this week, so please go check those guys out after the show. So before we get to this week's creative, let's meet this week's guests.
Teresa Kulupka 0:29
I'm Teresa Toluca EVP of digital marketing at Mr. Cooper in the US.
Sara Belardi 0:33
Hi, I'm Sarah Bernardi. I'm a senior brand marketing manager at Vodafone UK and specifically our work on Vodafone UK stands at Brand epoxy. Hi,
Pedro Bojikian 0:44
hello, I'm pedagogic, and Director of Product Marketing for Microsoft advertising.
William Galimberti 0:50
And Hello everybody. I'm William from Red Bull and head of sports marketing,
Tom Ollerton 0:54
what a panel from all over the world, lots of different backgrounds. This is gonna be great. So this week's kreativ is so impressive. It's essentially a music artist who has created a website that teaches people to code in secret. So let's have a look at
Unknown Speaker 1:08
that. Because there's nothing more in this life that excites me, encoding and bad bitches,
Tom Ollerton 1:13
Girls Who Code wants to inspire the next generation of female coders. But there's a long list of things girls find cooler than learning how to code. And guess who's at the top of that list. VMA goes to so when doji cat released a viral song about powerful women, we used it to empower the next generation of them
Unknown Speaker 1:36
to stop and here this partnered with girls who code we can code doji cats new video, a codable music video.
Tom Ollerton 1:47
That's right, the first ever codable music, video and interactive experience that secretly a coding lesson. Using snippets of code girls could change the story, directing a music video while low key learning how to code. Dojo code blew up around the world, like the entire world, we turned zero media dollars into $10 million of eyeballs. And girls everywhere spent millions of minutes learning to code without even realising it.
Unknown Speaker 2:21
Just like hacking into the mainframe, and like sitting at a computer like it, it is coding, it is design thinking it is creative, it is accessible, and it's making the world your own.
Tom Ollerton 2:31
Instead of consuming the internet, girls, we're creating it all by turning the world's hottest music video into the coolest coding class to ever exist.
Unknown Speaker 2:40
And that that's education.
Tom Ollerton 2:44
What I'm going to do is ask you all to give this creative idea both out of five. So on the count of three, can you just hold up your fingers? So 123? A four a four, a two and a three. Right? So what are we seeing here?
Sara Belardi 3:01
The idea itself, I think is brilliant, you know, like it really cuts through the target is very, very clear. And it's and it's different. So the first phase, I find it pretty good. But I also thought, oh, but then you're missing the opportunity of following up, you could have done more, you could have maybe follow up with people that creating content on this, you know, organically and maybe ask them to become your advocate for six months, you know, continue to work together to create, you know, some angel educational content that can spread the you know the word and, and actually, it doesn't doesn't seem like to have happened.
Pedro Bojikian 3:39
I love the execution, the creative, brilliant, the problem that I have, it's taking a step back, whether this is the right strategy for the organisation, because I really don't like how the ad was presented to us saying, Hey, girls find code boring, they don't have interest. They're thinking about all the things. That's just not true. And that's not the real problem here. The industry has a problem of representation and inclusion. The problem is the culture in the industry that pushes those girls away. And when you present something framing like that, that phase that girls really don't care about coding, oh, that's actually going against the mission. And we should think about in a different creative solution to address what is the point and if you go to the comments on the tech websites, they're made mainly male, male dominated. They are all think, Oh, this is so cute, changing font colours. It's exactly the problem and reinforcing some of the bias that we have in the industry so bad since that's my main problem with the campaign. It's actually with the creative insight from the beginning.
Teresa Kulupka 4:57
I especially liked it because it's not safe. When I was looking around, I saw a lot of kind of mom types or educators that were like, Oh, I can't show this in class or I get fired, but they're really trying to reach their audience where they're at. So they're not trying to get them through school. They're trying to get them through their culture and what music and people are interested in. And, yeah, it's not safe. I mean, they had, you know, guys drinking sky vodka in the beginning, so it's not your normal, you know, fifth graders gonna go and get that from their teacher. So I think it's just interesting because that the video is cool. And it's not over sanitised for People's Protection. It's real and applicable to what people are looking at.
William Galimberti 5:36
I think there's more to it in a way that we ourselves, we're working on projects of this type, not so much focused on women themselves. But to focus on the scene on coding, for instance, where we're trying to let make it less nerdy and less and less like outside the almost it making it cool and fun. So it's fun, regardless of it being focused just on women. So it's, I think it goes way beyond just something that every company is trying to do at the moment. In the more diverse, it's good, but many companies are trying to force it a bit. I think this is organically fun. A nice. I liked it because it works. It's not forced.
Sara Belardi 6:18
I also thought and that maybe is me. I don't know what you guys thought about it. But when I was doing it, I thought oh, that's fine. I can change names or I can change, you know, the little stars or whatever. But then I also thought, Oh, well, isn't it like I mean, it's yeah, it's a first you know, thing like it's the first experience, you have a coding. It's easy. You see immediately the result, and I think is brilliant. But also fault, man. I mean, I'm not stupid. I know that there's more to that. So I also felt almost nothing patronised patronise because it's too much, but also for this is really, really, really shallow and top level, but that's the whole point, right? You know, it's just to break the ice. And to get you there. The problem is that once I'm there, pull me in, don't get me, you know, on the surface, you know, give me more
Teresa Kulupka 7:06
I actually had signed up at the end, I went through that whole process, and I put in my email, because I'm expecting a little bit more from the learn more link, then sign up for email. And all I got was just kind of your out of the box. Welcome to our email list, here, our social channels, and I think they missed that opportunity there to, to give them some more immediate next steps, because I still think there's people that are like, I want to know more about this. And I think they missed that opportunity to drop them something specific to them signing up to that list, you know, whether it's like, follow this Tiktok, or follow this person to learn more about this, or even here's some, some are maybe some training that they put together to just give them some high level insights of what what would be ready for them. But you know, I think that's it's been two or three days since I signed up for that, and I haven't gotten anything. So it's out of mind. For me,
William Galimberti 7:57
it was very interesting for how it's focused on the generation who's coming through school to focus on that as well, I was having this debate with some student brand marketers we have on a campaign we're working on, and I was referencing relating to coding actually matrix, and I was just shoved in my face that what the hell is matrix. So that was exactly the point. And somehow that's a coding image I stayed with this one is I can change nails in a music video. It's actually really cool. I can recreate stuff live in that sense, something that the student Ramakant is at work with actually have fun doing. It's even a matter of creating filters for Instagram, that's also coding. They can be much fun, it's not a nerdy job anymore. They
Teresa Kulupka 8:43
know on their site. They say they're trying to fill the funnel for new female engineers, but you know, touching on that aspect of the culture, once you get in there, that it's very difficult to be a woman in coding in it in general. And how do you how do you survive that that culture? If you're coming in through this campaign, that's all very cute nail colour and, and fun, and then you know, the males that are already in the industry are like, that's not coding that's just changing colour, by the way,
Pedro Bojikian 9:12
the professional coder that make this happen. It's a woman. Brilliant, amazing. So in a way to reinforce to the audience of a people who are actually not inclusive showing, oh, when I have a professional female coder, things can be so creative, so well executed and pushing the envelope that oh, that's That's amazing.
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