“Run like a girl.” Told to act it out, a teenage girl flails her arms and giggles. Told the same thing, a ten-year-old just runs — fast, serious, arms pumping. The gap between those two reactions is the entire ad.
In June 2014, Always released a three-minute film directed by Lauren Greenfield that asked people of different ages to demonstrate what it looks like to “run like a girl,” “throw like a girl,” and “fight like a girl.” Teenagers and adults performed exaggerated, mocking versions. Girls under twelve, who hadn’t yet absorbed the insult, simply did their best. The film ends with a question stitched into decades of playground taunts: when did “like a girl” become something to be ashamed of?
The video passed 90 million views within months, becoming one of the most-shared ads of 2014, and P&G doubled down by cutting a 60-second version for Super Bowl XLIX in February 2015 — one of the rare Super Bowl spots built entirely around a social message rather than a punchline. It sparked the #LikeAGirl hashtag and a wave of imitators trying to bottle the same formula.
The campaign went on to collect 14 Cannes Lions, an Emmy, and a spot on YouTube’s list of the decade’s most-watched ads, while Always reported a measurable jump in how positively people viewed the brand. More than a decade later, “like a girl” is still more often used the way those ten-year-olds meant it — as a fact, not an insult.
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