In Milan, until now, there had never been a statue dedicated to a woman. And in a world in which the career aspirations of girls and young women are strongly influenced by gender stereotypes, it is unacceptable for the new generations to have only male models of success to look up to.
This is why Terre des Hommes, an NGO working for gender equality, launched the signature collection #UnaStatuaPerLeBambine, inviting the inhabitants of Milan to ask the municipality to build the first statue of a woman in the city.
To promote the collection of signatures, we created the ‘DiscovHery Billboards’. The first child-sized mini-billboard campaign that literally offers a new perspective on the city's monuments. Installed on 8 March, on the occasion of International Women's Rights Day, the billboards were specially made to host small statues of women and designed to be placed at specific points in the main squares of Milan so as to visually replace, thanks to a game of perspective, the male statues present, creating an iconic k-visual to be photographed and shared online.
By scanning a QR code, people were able to discover the stories of dozens of women who deserve a monument and access the petition to build the city's first female statue.
The petition saw more than 4,000 citizens campaign for Terre des Hommes - the best result in their history - but the real impact was online: with zero media budget, we achieved 48M reach thanks to the support of institutional representatives, celebrities, influencers and journalists.
And finally, a few months into the campaign, the most important result of all arrived: the first statue of a woman in Milan, dedicated to Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso, was finally unveiled by Mayor Sala.