Highlight The Remarkable 2.0 by Stabilo Boss Highlighter Pen

The 'Remarkable Hedy' entry, which won a Bronze at the 2020 Clio Awards, was submitted for the Stabilo Boss Highlighter Pen by DDB Group GMBH, Berlin. The submission was for the Out of Home medium, categorised under Product/Service and specifically as a Poster. Comprising a single image, this entry is part of the larger 'Highlight The Remarkable 2.0' campaign, which encompasses two distinct elements.

The beautiful print advertising campaign comprises a series of historic black and white photographs. These group shots are populated overwhelmingly by men – who are either in the foreground or at the centre of each shot.

But simple strokes of a yellow pen shifted the emphasis firmly to the unsung, remarkable women hidden in each frame: NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, US First Lady Edith Wilson and Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner.

The Story

Highlighter pens are used to mark-up important things, right? Typically words or passages in printed and written texts. Everyone is aware of the benefit of such pens – even if they only remember them from their student days, says Ickert.

Thus, the beautiful print advertising treatment combined visuals that cleverly spoke to the ongoing, emotive gender equality debate taking place in the mainstream media, with a copy line (‘Highlight the Remarkable’) that was a pure expression of the core product benefit. And the way these elements interacted was what made it so compelling.

‘Highlight the Remarkable’ turbo-charged the central message, and prompted people to share and discuss the ads on social media – with some even suggesting and celebrating other remarkable women on their own accounts.

The campaign recorded a massive 15 million Twitter impressions – and interaction rates of 27%. In total, Stabilo was mentioned 97.4% more often than it had been before the campaign. What’s even more noteworthy is the fact that not only did this campaign go viral for a short duration but has stayed extremely relevant on multiple channels across the internet with at least 4,100 mentions every day.

The right channel for the right message

It’s significant that the brand and agency chose to tell this story in print. An analogue execution just made sense. After all, the Stabilo Boss pen is an analogue tool used to mark-up physical written or printed texts.

But it was also a nod to the importance of the story they wanted to tell and the trustworthiness they needed to impart – at a time when cries of ‘fake news’, most often directed at digital media, are so familiar.

The common saying, "Behind every great man is a great woman," often implies that women remain in the background while men take centre stage. Stabilo Boss challenges this notion by highlighting extraordinary women and their stories in a series of ads. Created by the global advertising agency DDB, the campaign utilizes black-and-white photographs with Stabilo Boss highlighters drawing attention to these remarkable individuals.

Here are some of the remarkable women featured in the ads:

Edith Wilson

Edith Wilson, the second wife of President Woodrow Wilson, assumed her husband's presidential responsibilities after he suffered a stroke in 1919. She screened all state matters and made crucial decisions during his second term while he was bedridden.

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson, a mathematician at NASA, played a pivotal role in the safe return of Apollo 11 to Earth. Over her 35-year career, she earned a reputation for her expertise in complex manual calculations, contributing significantly to NASA's pioneering use of computers.

Lise Meitner

Physicist Lise Meitner made significant contributions to radioactivity and nuclear physics. Alongside her male partner Otto Hahn, she led a group of scientists in discovering nuclear fission. Despite their collaboration, only Otto was recognized with the Nobel Prize for chemistry for this breakthrough.