The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2023
LUX's Change The Angle puts QR codes where sports cameras leer — scanning flips the frame
At South Africa's Durban Open, women beach volleyballers wear QR codes where TV cameras linger; scanning them plays a film telling media to change the angle.
LUX (Unilever)
What it had to solve
LUX, Unilever's beauty brand, says women in sports are 10 times more likely than men to be objectified by camera angles that zoom in on body parts — a claim its brand vice president Severine Vauleon made in launching the work. Rather than lecture broadcasters, the brand took its "beauty is strength" message into a live broadcast where the problem was visibly happening.
How it works
LUX, Unilever's beauty brand, came to Wunderman Thompson Singapore with a finding its brand vice president stated plainly: women in sports are 10 times more likely to be objectified by camera angles that focus on certain body parts than their male counterparts, and even top female athletes face it. With beach volleyball — a sport played in minimal clothing — as the most visible example, the brand wanted to make its long-running argument that beauty is a source of strength.
The answer put the argument where the problem lives: on the athletes. At the Durban Open women's beach volleyball tournament on April 15-16, 2023, eight teams wore QR codes on the areas sports cameras tend to linger over. During SABC's live telecast, estimated to reach 19.7 million viewers in South Africa, anyone who scanned a code opened a LUX film in which sportswomen, commentators and officials call on media to "change the angle" — celebrate strength and skill, not anatomy. The campaign site closed with six practical guidelines for how female athletes should be filmed.
The stunt made the audience's own viewing habit the activation: the objectifying frame carried the fix in-frame, and the film's statistics — including 2,500 pictures objectifying women reported at the 2021 Olympics — were amplified by influencers such as Zozibini Tunzi, Kass Naidoo and Bongi Msomi. Recognition followed at MAD STARS 2023, where the work took Grands Prix in both PR Stars and Social & Influencer Stars among 20,282 entries from 63 countries.
Why it lands
- Placing QR codes exactly where cameras leer turned the audience's own viewing habit into the activation.
- The film showed sportswomen themselves making the demand, so the argument carried athlete authority rather than brand opinion.
- Live broadcast reach of an estimated 19.7 million viewers meant the media problem was demonstrated inside the media that caused it.
- Six practical guidelines gave broadcasters an action to take, moving the work from criticism to an industry how-to.
What it did
The campaign hijacked the broadcast itself: every objectifying camera shot carried its own correction in-frame, and the live SABC telecast put the QR codes in front of an estimated 19.7 million viewers. The stunt also generated wide trade coverage and, at MAD STARS 2023 — judged from 20,282 entries across 63 countries — won Grands Prix in both the PR Stars and Social & Influencer Stars categories.
What you can take
A message lands hardest inside the moment it criticises: putting the protest on the players' own bodies made every wrong camera angle trigger the correction instead of just complaining about it.
Since then
The stunt ran over the Durban Open weekend in April 2023, and the campaign film, the QR codes and the six guidelines lived on through the campaign website and influencer amplification. Partnering with South African NGO Sonke Gender Justice extended the work beyond sport into street-harassment prevention. At MAD STARS 2023, judged from 20,282 entries in 63 countries, "Change The Angle" took Grands Prix in both the PR Stars and Social & Influencer Stars categories, cementing it as a reference case for how brands can confront objectification in sports coverage.
Sources
- Lux Launches "Change The Angle" Campaign Highlighting Misogyny In Sports, Via Wunderman Thompson Singapore
- Unilever's LUX raises awareness of sexism in sports through 'Change the Angle' campaign
- MAD STARS 2023 Announces Its Grands Prix of the Year
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