Girl Guides of Canada (GGC) is a leading non-profit organization for girls, offering a safe and inclusive space for them to come together and unleash their potential. Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on how GGC could operate. While programming continued virtually, membership saw a significant decline.
With schools reopened and public health restrictions rolled back, GGC could safely return to in-person gatherings. They needed to rejuvenate the membership base and compel parents of girls aged 5–8 to register their daughters this fall. But GGC first needed to get back on parents’ radars.
Girls have enough spaces in society where they’re expected to be well-behaved, polite and,ultimately, fit inside a certain mould. But girlhood is changing, with younger female role models demonstrating it’s okay to be loud and speak your mind: Amanda Gorman, Greta Thunberg, and Simone Biles show girls today that their ideas, opinions and ambitions matter.
GGC offers a safe and inclusive space for girls to come together and unleash their potential. But that space only exists when girls can show up for each other. After 18 months of pandemic isolation and stress, girls across Canada had even more need for these fun and formative experiences. In fact, 66% of Canadian girls’ parents are concerned that, during the pandemic, girls have missed out on opportunities to build confidence and 65% are concerned that girls have missed out on developing a sense of belonging with peers.
Girl Guides research showed that perceptions of GGC were dated. Parents assumed the organization and programming were essentially the same as they remembered from their own childhoods – or they just associated them as cookie sellers. The reality is GGC has been changing in all the same ways girlhood has changed, embracing everything from STEM to social activism. Exploring those topics and many others alongside like-minded girls in a space where they can truly be themselves would be a great way to help the girls regain what they had missed out on during lockdown – if only Canadian parents knew it.
The historic views of Girl Guides are preventing girls from building their futures.
They decided to take a symbol of how people already perceive GGC and use it to demonstrate the reality of GGC today and how amazing things happen when girls get together. They turned traditional campfire songs into Girl Guides Fire Songs.
Well-known campfire songs, including “Bingo,” “Down by the Bay,” and “Wheels on the Bus”, were transformed into anthems that addressed important themes to inspire girls, like equality and inclusion, speaking up, and individuality. Five girls were cast to form a band and record the songs, working with Juno-winning music video director (and former Girl Guide) Emma Higgins to shoot two loud and unignorable music videos. The first was a concert-inspired video, with the second shot to feel like a basement jam session.
The music videos, including lyric versions to sing along to, were released over the course of a month, with all three tracks being released on Spotify and YouTube. Videos were promoted in social, digital and donated TV with GIPHY stickers released as a social engagement tool.
The transformation: Historical Girl Guides communication focused on programming and “what girls do.”
The new approach instead proved GGC’s modern shift by showcasing “who girls are.”
Fire Songs boosted interest in Girl Guides’ membership, achieving a 28% lift in website traffic and 89% lift traffic to the Join Us page year over year. National media coverage delivered over 35 hits, including a full page in the Toronto Star and 40 minutes of broadcast coverage, with dedicated segments on Global News and CityNews. Fire Songs was able to shift GGC perceptions with Canadian parents of girls: 83% “saw GGC in a new way”, 84% felt more that “GGC is a modern organization for girls today”, 82% felt more that “GGC is an organization that helps girls build confidence”, 85% felt more that “GGC is an organization that helps empower girls”, and 88% were more “open to their daughter participating in GGC”. Finally, today’s Girl Guides are bringing Fire Songs into their Guides groups: Maggie Z., a 13-year-old Girl Guide, said, “I seriously got shivers from hearing it and wanted to start to jump up and down. The new versions of the songs are 10 times better than the old ones. The newer songs show girl power all the way through.”