Fake company triggers debate about math and girls
For engineering association Usic, PAM Advertising invented the fictional online service Math Dealer to spark a debate about math and girls.
The prejudice that boys are better at math than girls persists to this day - although studies have refuted this several times. This is a central cause of the lack of women in engineering, because math is already the crucial link between girls and the engineering profession at primary school age.
To address this problem more broadly for Usic, PAM invented and promoted the Math Dealer service: an online service where girls solve math problems for boys for money. Through the website, girls could register as Math Dealers and boys could register as math problem consumers. Posters in Zurich, Bern, Lausanne and Lugano advertised the fictitious Math Dealer service. In addition, Math Dealer wrote to schools with an enclosed poster and flyers were distributed to students.
As intended, the campaign triggered reactions: in addition to outrage and puzzlement about what and who was behind it, one politician also filed a complaint.
Responsible at Usic: Lea Kusano (Head of Communications). Responsible at PAM Advertising: Parvez Sheik Fareed, Miro Pfister (creation, strategy, consulting).
About View, Watson and other media, it was resolved that Usic was behind the campaign. The resolution was also made through the Math Dealer Website. Also, all people who had registered for the "service" received an email educating them about the campaign.
People like the journalist Hanna Wick, whose Time-The media coverage of the article on girls and mint subjects, which appeared on the same day as the dissolution, was a strong endorsement of the campaign. Likewise, after the resolution, Usic received various letters from math teachers and engineering companies who were pleased with the media placement of the topic of girls and math.
