DEGIRO and UN Women - Pink Chip

AKQA, AmsterdamCase Video2024 DEGIRO and UN Women Not-for-Profit & Government Turn Message into Product Make the Brand the Hero of a Bigger Fight

Appears on playlistsBanking on Creativity|Not-for-Profit & Government|Ads That Fight Like a Girl

DEGIRO and UN Women approached AKQA. They wanted to challenge deep-seated gender bias in finance, where women-led companies were undervalued despite strong performance. The client needed a compelling tool to prove the financial potential of women-led businesses to investors, aiming to drive increased investment and accelerate progress towards gender equality in the financial sector.

Creative Idea

DEGIRO and UN Women launched the Pink Chip index, tracking women-led companies, to provide financial proof against investment bias.

Pink Chip created a unique stock market index that exclusively tracks high-performing women-led companies to prove their business potential and challenge gender bias in investing. By demonstrating that women-led companies can outperform market benchmarks, the initiative provides concrete financial evidence to encourage more investment in female leadership.

Invest in proof, not bias. Pink Chip is changing the business world with data on women leadership. The business landscape is changing as women break barriers, showcasing our abilities and skills. It’s time to recognize and celebrate our success as we redefine industry standards. Insight Research shows that companies with female leaders tend to be more profitable and have better stock price performance. Despite this, just 6 per cent of CEOs of publicly listed companies around the world are women. Data shows that when some companies appoint a female CEO, their share price drops by 2 to 3 per cent – placing female leaders at a disadvantage before their tenure has even begun. Idea A new financial tool that proves the power of women. Pink Chip is a collection of indices that tracks the performance of exceptional women-led businesses in markets around the world. Pink Chip is created and designed by AKQA in partnership with Thematic, DEGIRO and UN Women NL. It is the first index to align with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5, and the first to launch in collaboration with UN Women. The first of its kind, Pink Chip allows investors to see for themselves how investing in women is better for their bottom line, boosting their returns while also supporting female leaders. It is freely available on pinkchip.org, and on the DEGIRO app. Impact Invest in women, accelerate progress. On International Women’s Day Pink Chip joined UN Women NL at the opening of the stock market at Euronext in celebration of the year’s theme #InvestInWomenAccelerateProgress and went live on Europe’s largest investing platform DEGIRO. Within two weeks of its launch there were over 14,500 new investors in Pink Chip companies which saw a 6.7% increase in their stock price. The index has since climbed a further 9.48% and outperformed market benchmarks. Pink Chip has reached over 2 million impressions across social media and outdoor placements and attracted nearly 70,000 visitors to pinkchip.org within its first week. "UN Women applauds the Pink Chip initiative, which will lead to more awareness among investors of the true potential of women and spur investments in women-led companies." Marije Cornelissen, Executive Director and Founder, UN Women NL AWARDS Eurobest 2024 Innovation Grand Prix Cannes Lions 2024 Shortlisted in the Dan Wieden Titanium Lions category Gold in Creative Strategy Gold in Glass 'The Lion for Change' Gold in Sustainable Development Goals Silver in Direct Silver in Innovation CREDITS Brands: DEGIRO and United Nations Women. Creative Agency: AKQA, Amsterdam. Production Company: Amp Amsterdam. Country: Netherlands, United States. Art Director: Sam Rowlands. Associate Creative Director: Grace O'Brien. CEO & Founder: Steven Carpenter. Designer: Dianne van der Hoeven, Emma Nikolovski. Group Creative Director: Evan Dunn. Intern: Giulia Ballerio, Leticia Diaz, Philip Gebben, Priya Venkat. Senior Copywriter: Conor Cunniffe. Senior Front-End Developer: Viktor Jensen-Torp. Senior Motion Designer: Guilherme Romeiro. Software Engineer: Joe Kromer, Jon Opray, Kevin Sun. Account Manager: Berber Visser. Associate Strategy Director: Christiana Courtright. Chief Production Officer: Brian Wey. Client Managing Director: Christopher Henderson. Client Services Director: Hannah Glazebrook. Founder: Sam Rowlands. Strategy Associate: Cherisse Dsouza.Invest in proof, not bias. Pink Chip is changing the business world with data on women leadership. The business landscape is changing as women break barriers, showcasing our abilities and skills. It’s time to recognize and celebrate our success as we redefine industry standards. …

Turning Investor Bias Into A Buy Signal

The Math Behind The Bias

The campaign turned a specific psychological phenomenon into a financial strategy. Research indicated that share prices typically drop by 2-3% immediately following the appointment of a female CEO due to ingrained market bias. AKQA and DEGIRO reframed this "moral failure" as a "buy" signal, allowing investors to capitalize on undervalued stocks. To ensure the index was beyond reproach, the team used AI software to build an open dataset of female-led companies, requiring a minimum market cap of $2 billion and a CAGR of over 8% over three years.

Crashing The App

The launch on International Women’s Day 2024 at Euronext Amsterdam - the world’s oldest stock exchange - triggered an immediate market reaction. The surge of interest was so intense it reportedly crashed the DEGIRO app as users rushed to access the index. Within the first two weeks, over 14,500 new investors bought into Pink Chip companies, driving a 6.7% increase in their stock prices. Backtesting the data over four years proved the concept was no fluke, showing a staggering 58.90% growth that consistently outperformed the S&P 500.

Defining A New Asset Class

Led by a female-heavy creative team including Samantha Rowlands, Hannah Glazebrook, and Grace O’Brien, the initiative aimed to create a permanent financial category. By naming it "Pink Chip," the campaign sought to give female leadership the same institutional weight as "Blue Chip" (reliability) or "Green Chip" (sustainability). It stands as the first financial index to align directly with UN Sustainable Development Goal 5, proving the tagline: "Invest in proof, not bias."

Creative Strategy Deconstructed

Company

DEGIRO provides the high-scale brokerage infrastructure and real-time data access, while UN Women NL adds global authority and alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 5 to validate the initiative's integrity.

Customer

Investors seek market-beating returns but are hindered by a systemic 'bias tax' where female leadership is unfairly devalued by the market despite data showing higher profitability and resilience.

Culture

The global #InvestInWomen movement is shifting from symbolic representation toward demanding tangible economic empowerment and the closing of the multi-trillion-dollar gender investment gap through data.

Company

Strategy:

Reposition gender diversity as a high-yield financial indicator to transform social progress into a measurable investment strategy.

Customer

Investors seek market-beating returns but are hindered by a systemic 'bias tax' where female leadership is unfairly devalued by the market despite data showing higher profitability and resilience.

Culture

Strategy:

Reposition gender diversity as a high-yield financial indicator to transform social progress into a measurable investment strategy.

Results

In the 24 months post-appointment, female CEOs saw a 20% increase in stock price momentum (S&P Global). Firms with more women in senior positions are more profitable (Harvard Business Review). Stocks drop 2-3% after the appointment of a female leader (Northwestern University study). Today, just 7% of the world's CEOs are women. The Pink:Chip Index, when backdated up to four years, showed a performance of +182.53% compared to the S&P 500's +88.43% as of March 28, 2024. In the first three weeks, the campaign achieved over 70k unique site visits, reached 85 million people, and generated 58 million online impressions. The Pink:Chip Index recorded 67,000 uses in its first three weeks. To date, the Pink:Chip Index has out-performed market benchmarks by +80%.

+182.53%

Pink:Chip Index performance

85M

people reached

+80%

outperforming market benchmarks

Strategy Technique

Make the Brand the Hero of a Bigger Fight

The campaign positions DEGIRO and UN Women as heroes fighting gender bias in finance. The Pink Chip index is their tool to accelerate this vital societal movement.

Explore Technique

Creative Technique

Turn Message into Product

The campaign turns its core message into a tangible product: the Pink Chip index. This index actively proves women-led companies' financial potential, making the abstract claim measurable.

Explore Technique

Craft Breakdown

This campaign's craft is exceptional in its groundbreaking digital craft, leveraging sophisticated digital execution and AI to create a live financial index that powerfully counters market bias through undeniable data visualization and a strong brand design.

Digital CraftExceptional

The development of the AI software to assemble the dataset, the creation of the interactive 'Pink:Chip' index itself, and the robust PINKCHIP.ORG platform demonstrate highly sophisticated digital engineering and execution.

Data VisualizationExceptional

The campaign's power hinges on its ability to clearly and compellingly visualize complex financial performance data, making the 'success gap' undeniable and the outperformance of female-led companies instantly digestible on the index.

The campaign's impact is forged by the seamless integration of a breakthrough idea with cutting-edge digital technology, brought to life through compelling data visualization and a cohesive design.