The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2021
Girls Who Code turns Doja Cat's 'Woman' into the first codeable music video
DojaCode lets fans direct a Doja Cat video by editing real CSS, JavaScript and Python, turning a pop hit into a first coding lesson.
Girls Who Code
What it had to solve
Girls Who Code exists to close the gender gap in tech by getting girls interested in coding, but a curriculum is easy to skip. It needed an invitation that lived inside the pop culture girls already follow, so Doja Cat was brought in to help make the first codeable music video in the world.
How it works
Girls Who Code wants to close the gender gap in tech by getting girls interested in coding, and its problem is the classic one for education campaigns: a lesson is easy to ignore. To introduce girls to the possibility of code, the nonprofit brought in Doja Cat, one of the most streamed artists of the moment, and set out to make the first codeable music video in the world.
The result, DojaCode, turned Doja Cat's hit single 'Woman' into an interactive experience. Visitors direct the music video — deciding what happens on screen — by writing and editing in three real languages: CSS, JavaScript and Python. Instead of a tutorial about code, fans got a music video they could operate through code, launched in December 2021 around the single's video release.
The idea was that playing with the video and learning the languages were the same act: every effect a visitor changed was a line of real code, so the first session already felt like making something. DojaCode entered the D&AD awards archive as an early example of the codeable music video, an entertainment format built to double as an on-ramp for girls who might never have opened an editor.
Why it lands
- The lesson was the medium: editing real code changed the video, so trying code felt like play, not study.
- Doja Cat's pop moment gave the cause an audience a curriculum-style ad could not have reached.
- The languages were real — CSS, JavaScript and Python — so the first session was actual programming, not a simulation.
- A codeable music video is shareable by nature, letting the educational pitch spread through the single's own release moment.
What it did
DojaCode hid a first programming session inside a video fans already wanted to watch: the lesson was the act of directing the star, and the languages were real. It was presented as the first codeable music video and entered the D&AD awards archive as an entertainment format that doubles as an education tool.
What you can take
To teach a skill nobody asked for, hide the lesson inside content they already want to watch — the edit box becomes the classroom.
Since then
DojaCode stayed in the D&AD awards archive as a reference for codeable entertainment, and Girls Who Code kept building on the same interactive-code playbook: in December 2022 it launched Girls Who Code Girls, where girls code their own game characters, a project that later earned two Wood Pencils at D&AD in 2023.
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