• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, November 4, 2022

It’s been almost 100 years since the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced, and 50 years since the first state ratified it. A new campaign from the ERA Coalition lampoons how ridiculous it is that women don’t yet have equal rights by creating something that does: a corporation called WOMAN Corp.

The Ogilvy-created film stars Gabriella (Gabby) Pizzolo, best known for her role as Suzy in Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”

She interviews a legal expert and learns that while protections for corporations, which are “people,” are expanding, protections for women are decreasing. “Even the companies that make those little testicles for pickup trucks? Truck nuts are more deserving of protection than every woman in America? Even Dolly Parton?”

Yep. And when the teenager realizes just how much better protected she’d be as a business than a person, she sets about starting her own company -- right down to buying a copier and turning herself into a smug CEO.

The ad addresses the widespread perception held by 85% of Americans that women are guaranteed rights to equal to men's under the Constitution.

The effort calls for people to act through political engagement with their members of Congress, donations, and sharing on social media, including joining the staff of WOMAN Corp on LinkedIn by adding it to their work experience. (The profile explains the company is “founded on spite, outrage and regular rage.”)

This year has “seen the undoing of years of progress that women have marched, protested, and fought for,” says Lisa Bright, chief creative officer for Ogilvy California, in the campaign announcement. “We wanted to blast a spotlight on the absurdity that while our U.S. government consistently defends the idea that corporations are ‘persons’ -- extending more and more rights to them -- the rights and protections granted to women are going in the absolute opposite direction. And it’s a shame we need to get so damn creative just to get equal rights and protections.”

Ads direct people to a website that explains how to contact senators to remove the time limit on the ERA.

The campaign is breaking just days before the election. “We need the Senate to remove the time limit on the Equal Rights Amendment,” an Ogilvy spokesperson tells Marketing Daily. “We are at an important moment where people can vote to ensure those elected to the next Senate will take it up, or can encourage the current Senate to do it in the lame-duck session.”