Think it’s tough being a woman in a man’s world? Try the world of gaming. It’s brutal. Maybelline New York (part of the L’Oréal Groupe),has today launched a new campaign in Australia to highlight the toxic harassment facing women, non-binary people and other LGBTQIA+ communities in the Australian gaming universe, in line with the brand’s mission to give everyone the self-confidence to express their beauty, to play and to make change. The new Through Their Eyes campaign by agency, Hero, fits into the Brave Together platform, a global initiative to destigmatise anxiety and depression, and support all those impacted.

The campaign comes off the back of recent national survey results on the level of discrimination across all genders in Australian gaming, which revealed 83% of female identifying and 50% of LGBTQIA+ identifying gamers have directly experienced and/or observed offensive behaviour or language while online gaming, with 55% of female identifying and 67% of LGBTQIA+ identifying players admitting to turning off their microphone when playing to hide their gender and avoid harassment.

The campaign leads with an eye-opening film that gives two male gamers a first-hand experience of being a female gamer through voice-modification software. Prominent Aussie male gamers and content creators, Joel “JoelBergs” Bergs and Drew “DrewD0g” Warne were confronted by gamer discrimination playing a first-person shooter game with female-altered voices and fake female profiles. Within less than two hours of game play with altered voices, the male players are bombarded with abusive comments while well-known female-identifying gamers, Amber “PaladinAmber” Wadham and Luna “Luminumn” watched, finding alarming similarities to the discrimination they face in their own experiences.

Maybelline marketing director, Alexandra Shadbolt, stated, “Maybelline New York has always advocated for feeling confident, powerful and represented. Since the launch of our Brave Together initiative in 2022, it has been our passion to learn more about the lived experiences of women, non-binary people and other LGBTQIA+ communities to understand where more work needs to be done, whilst providing more immediate support to those impacted by anxiety and depression.

“In understanding the sheer amount of discrimination these communities face in the gaming sphere, we really wanted to showcase this lived experience for more Australians to see what it’s really like in pockets of our online world. We hope that seeing it all play out through the eyes of our players, more gamers can think differently about their own actions and we can all be more conscious of creating a safer, inclusive space in gaming.”

Hero executive creative director, Shane Geffen, added, “The more we delved into the gaming world, the more evidence we found that it was a toxic environment for female, trans and non-binary players. Something that was going unchecked.”

Hero copywriter, Anneliese Sullivan, commented, “It was truly shocking. What we could witness in just a few short hours made us only imagine how it feels to face this hate every day. It’s really our vision for this film to play a part in turning ambivalent gamers into allies for a safer, more inclusive gaming community for everyone.”

The 3-minute film launched on February 16 across owned social media channels and will be screened at Maybelline’s live gaming tournament, the Eyes Up Cup, next month. The tournament will be contested by 32 of Australia’s most impactful women in gaming on a custom Maybelline New York Fortnite mod map designed for the campaign in a collaboration between Maybelline New York, Click Media, Google, and Hero.

Credits:
Client: Maybelline New York
Marketing Director: Alexandra Shadbolt
Digital Marketing & Comms Lead: Alana Pozzebon 
Brand Business Lead: Adele Courgenay 
Brand Engagement Manager: Liz Odey 
Brand Manager MNY Eye: Tess Norman 
Digital Brand Manager: Dawid Zastawnik 

Agency: Hero
Executive Creative Director: Shane Geffen 
Creative Director: Andrew Woodhead
Art Director: Charlotte Smith
Copywriters: Anneliese Sullivan, Will Fox 
Senior Designer: Aaron Wickers
Head of Strategy: Tallon Mason-Kane
Group Business Director: Charlie McDevitt 
National Digital Managing Partner: Tim Evans 
Lead Project Manager: Jenny Pham Manuel 
Producer: Grace Quinn
Editor: Joel Sharpe
Online editor: Adrian Katz 

Production Company: Truce Films 
Director: Jessica Barclay Lawton 
Executive Producer: Elise Trenorden 
Producer: Carla McConnell
DOP: Jesse Gohier-Fleet 

Sound Design & Music: Gusto Studios