Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is a sin­gle day — March 8 — that “rep­re­sents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate the achieve­ments of women while call­ing for greater equal­i­ty,” at least accord­ing to the web­site InternationalWomensDay.com. And this year, a num­ber of brands used the occa­sion to roll out cam­paigns – and, in sev­er­al cas­es, just sin­gle-day acti­va­tions – that are tied to longer term, more ever­green efforts.

Tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing col­lat­er­al like bill­boards and mag­a­zines, as well as dig­i­tal favorites like videos and hash­tags, aimed to draw atten­tion to weighty top­ics like gen­der qual­i­ty, empow­er­ment and domes­tic abuse on Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day.

Mar­ket­ing experts say lever­ag­ing pop­u­lar memes and hash­tags is a great way to draw atten­tion to these issues and can help brands con­nect with women in par­tic­u­lar on an occa­sion like Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, but the chal­lenge remains to actu­al­ly live the mes­sage by demon­strat­ing these val­ues in the mar­ket.

Here’s a look at some of the more note­wor­thy efforts for Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day this year.

Clinton Foundation’s #NotThere

On March 8, brands teamed up with the non­prof­it Clin­ton Foun­da­tion to raise aware­ness of gen­der inequal­i­ty by remov­ing women from their adver­tis­ing to “[reflect] what a new analy­sis of women and girls’ progress says about the state of gen­der equal­i­ty: we’re not there yet,” the web­site Not-There.org says.

As part of the effort, media com­pa­ny Condé Nast removed the cov­er images on titles like Vogue, Glam­our, Self, Allure, Teen Vogue, W, and Brides, and instead direct­ed read­ers to Not-There.org, which has facts on gen­der equal­i­ty, along with inter­ac­tive data visu­al­iza­tions.

In addi­tion, on Clear Chan­nel Outdoor’s Times Square bill­board, audio prod­ucts brand Beats by Dre removed images of women and direct­ed con­sumers to the Not There web­site. Addi­tion­al brands like Dove, Tre­sem­mé, Under Armour, and Kate Spade New York also removed women from their adver­tis­ing and direct­ed con­sumers to Not-There.org.

“I think some­times the media gives the false impres­sion, through its visu­al imagery, that women are treat­ed equal­ly in the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion, said Vogue Edi­tor-in-Chief Anna Win­tour, in a pre­pared state­ment. “It is impor­tant for us to cor­rect that impres­sion, even sym­bol­i­cal­ly on March 8, to move the con­ver­sa­tion for­ward and cre­ate real change.”

Cre­at­ed in con­junc­tion with ad agency Droga5, the Not There cam­paign coin­cides with the release of the No Ceil­ings Full Par­tic­i­pa­tion Report, which the Clin­ton Foun­da­tion says is a 20-year data-dri­ven review on the sta­tus of women and girls since 1995, when Hillary Clin­ton called on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to ensure that “women’s rights are human rights.”

The Not There cam­paign and No Ceil­ings data was also fea­tured in Snapchat’s Dis­cov­er plat­form as a day-long takeover of Snapchat’s Snap Chan­nel.  In addi­tion, iHeart­Media radio sta­tions launched an on-air Not There cam­paign that played clips by female artists with­out the female vocal tracks.

“We are tak­ing a col­lec­tive stand that full par­tic­i­pa­tion for women and girls any­where and every­where remains the unfin­ished busi­ness of the 21st cen­tu­ry,” said Clin­ton Foun­da­tion Vice Chair Chelsea Clin­ton. “By know­ing the facts and what has worked and has­n’t worked to advance gen­der equal­i­ty, we can accel­er­ate the pace of change for women and girls…”

In an accom­pa­ny­ing video, actress­es Amy Poehler, Cameron Diaz, Jen­ny Slate, Sien­na Miller, and Pad­mi Lak­sh­mi lent their voic­es to “inspire Amer­i­cans to learn the facts on gen­der equal­i­ty and inspire action on a glob­al scale.”

The video had about 35,000 views as of March 8.

Women’s Aid’s #LookAtMe

Cre­ative agency WCRS and UK domes­tic vio­lence char­i­ty Women’s Aid teamed up to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive bill­board for Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day that, per a press release, “shows how we can all make tan­gi­ble changes in the fight against domes­tic vio­lence.”

Per WCRS, the engage­ment-acti­vat­ed bill­board includ­ed the image of a bruised woman and the mes­sage, “Look at me.”

The cre­ative, which was dis­played at three loca­tions in the UK, used facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy that WCRS says enables the screens to rec­og­nize when con­sumers paid atten­tion to the woman. As more peo­ple noticed her, her bruis­es slow­ly healed, which, WCRS says, demon­strates that by tak­ing notice, con­sumers can help con­front domes­tic vio­lence.

Passers­by who looked at the screens also got feed­back via a live video feed that ran along the bot­tom of the ad as a visu­al tick­er tape, reg­is­ter­ing an increas­ing num­ber of view­ers. As of March 6, Stu­art Williams, plan­ner at WCRS, said WCRS was still track­ing engage­ment, dwell time and dona­tions, but says, “Anec­do­tal­ly, we’ve seen a real­ly pos­i­tive response to the cam­paign, with a par­tic­u­lar­ly warm reac­tion on Twit­ter.”

Accord­ing to Williams, WCRS cre­at­ed a 3D cin­e­ma ad for Women’s Aid in 2012 called Blind Eye that asked con­sumers to cov­er one eye to see one side of the sto­ry – a woman going about her day-to-day life – and to cov­er the oth­er eye to see the oth­er side – the woman being abused by her part­ner.

“This cam­paign was real­ly suc­cess­ful but we felt like there was more we could do – while the view­er could choose whether to watch or not watch, he/she couldn’t actu­al­ly influ­ence what was hap­pen­ing on screen,” Williams said. “We thought the mes­sage would be even more pow­er­ful if the viewer’s choice to look or not to look could actu­al­ly have a direct impact on the out­come.”

Salvation Army’s #TheDress

The South African arm of char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion Sal­va­tion Army cap­i­tal­ized upon the pop­u­lar­i­ty of #The­Dress hash­tag to also high­light abuse against women in a tweet that played on the dress’ col­ors and asked, “Why is it so hard to see black and blue? The only illu­sion is if you think it’s her choice. One in six women are vic­tims of abuse. Stop abuse against women.”

Is it so hard 2 see black & blue? 1 in 6 women are vic­tims. #StopAbuse­A­gainst­Women #blackand­blue #white­and­gold pic.twitter.com/HoYNXBQRIE — The­Sal­va­tion­ArmySA (@SalvationArmySA) March 6, 2015

As of March 8, it had more than 7,800 retweets and 3,500 favorites. Fur­ther, per the Sal­va­tion Army, the ad was also the sub­ject of more than 3,000 tweets in the space of an hour on March 6 and “had the poten­tial to reach 6 mil­lion view­ers through­out the world.”

“We are enor­mous­ly encour­aged that so many peo­ple on social media appear to be pas­sion­ate about fight­ing the abuse of women,” said Carin Holmes, PR Sec­re­tary for the Sal­va­tion Army’s South­ern Africa Ter­ri­to­ry, in a pre­pared state­ment. “We are indebt­ed to adver­tis­ing agency, Ire­land Dav­en­port, for their cre­ativ­i­ty.”

The Sal­va­tion Army’s work among abused women includes a shel­ter, Care­haven in Cape Town, which it says offers sanc­tu­ary and short-term hous­ing to up to 60 women and their chil­dren.

Accord­ing to Tes­sa Wegert, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Enlight­en, lever­ag­ing pop­u­lar cul­tur­al memes and hash­tag trends like #The­Dress is a great strat­e­gy for recal­i­brat­ing the way con­sumers view social issues.

“If there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn a meme into a debate about a more mean­ing­ful issue, orga­ni­za­tions should jump on that,” she said. “It gives them imme­di­ate access to a mas­sive audi­ence of engaged social media users, and dares those users to see a famil­iar visu­al in a new way.”

How­ev­er, Wegert notes the chal­lenge for brands work­ing to call atten­tion to issues like domes­tic vio­lence is to cut through the social media clut­ter, but being unpre­dictable as the Sal­va­tion Army has done can real­ly help.

Fur­ther, Kris Kiger, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing direc­tor at adver­tis­ing agency R/GA, agrees cam­paigns like this can be an effec­tive way to seed the dis­cus­sion of seri­ous issues.

“We are a high­ly frag­ment­ed pop­u­la­tion with dis­parate­ly shared expe­ri­ences. Adver­tis­ing might be the one way we can assure the seed­ing of impor­tant pub­lic aware­ness,” she said. “I think adver­tis­ing is sto­ry­telling, and it’s a great way to reach and affect audi­ences. Adver­tis­ing reflects cul­ture. At its best, it can affect and help shape it. It’s a great respon­si­bil­i­ty the indus­try has if we choose to rec­og­nize that.”

YouTube’s #DearMe

In addi­tion, YouTube is encour­ag­ing con­sumers to upload video let­ters addressed to their younger selves in an effort called #DearMe for Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day.

An overview video from YouTube has 3.5 mil­lion views as of March 8.

A blog post reminds users how hard it was to be teenagers and implores them to “share your expe­ri­ences to help make that jour­ney eas­i­er for a new gen­er­a­tion of girls” with the hash­tag #DearMe. A search on YouTube for the hash­tag yield­ed about 15,000 results as of March 8. Fur­ther, per Top­sy, #DearMe has more than 100,000 men­tions since March 1.

Users can also uti­lize YouTube’s GIF-mak­er on its #DearMe Tum­blr page.

“YouTube is a place where peo­ple can come togeth­er, share inter­ests, relate expe­ri­ences and offer each oth­er sup­port. From #ItGets­Bet­ter to #Proud­to­Play, we’ve seen our com­mu­ni­ty inspire and empow­er those in need of encour­age­ment,” the plat­form says. “Today, we’re ask­ing you to do the same for girls who don’t have to face their prob­lems alone.”

Dig­i­tal indus­try con­sul­tant Hol­lis Thomases said to expect more of this feel-good/in­spi­ra­tional adver­tis­ing going for­ward.

“Women are ‘more feel­ing crea­tures,’ as it’s been put out there and evoca­tive adver­tis­ing like this gets the core of a feel­ing,” she said.

How­ev­er, she notes con­cern about the overuse of cam­paigns like this “par­tic­u­lar­ly if the brand mes­sag­ing does not con­nect to what the brand actu­al­ly demon­strates in the mar­ket” because “brand­ing and mes­sag­ing alone will not work unless the con­sumer can also believe that the com­pa­ny behind the mes­sage actu­al­ly ‘lives’ that mes­sage,” Thomases said.

Always’ #LikeAGirl

In addi­tion, fem­i­nine brand Always released anoth­er video, Stronger Togeth­er, in its #LikeA­Girl cam­paign, which has about 163,000 views as of March 8. Always launched the first #LikeA­Girl video in June 2014 to “shed a light on the pow­er of words and how the com­mon­ly used phrase ‘like a girl’ – often used as an insult – can have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on girls’ self-con­fi­dence.”

It has more than 56 mil­lion views to date. The brand also repur­posed the ad for the Super Bowl and gained anoth­er 2.5 mil­lion views.

“With this new user-gen­er­at­ed video, we con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on girls’ con­fi­dence by tak­ing a stand to turn #LikeA­Girl into a phrase that rep­re­sents the strength, tal­ent, char­ac­ter and amaz­ing-ness of every girl,” the brand says.

Per Always, the spot has been seen by more than 85 mil­lion peo­ple over­all and has helped deliv­er “a pow­er­ful mes­sage to young girls to help them main­tain con­fi­dence at puber­ty” and “inspired mil­lions of girls around the world to take action by shar­ing what they proud­ly do #LikeA­Girl,” which is show­cased in the most recent video.

In addi­tion, Always says its #LikeA­Girl cam­paign has also start­ed to change pub­lic per­cep­tion. Per Always’ research, before the cam­paign, 19 per­cent of females ages 16 to 24 had a pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tion with the phrase “like a girl,” and, after watch­ing the video, 76 per­cent agree they will no longer view “like a girl” as an insult. In addi­tion, 59 per­cent of men said it changed their per­cep­tion of the phrase “like a girl.”

Accord­ing to Kiger, launch­ing the video with a brand­ed hash­tag as the name is part of a strong strat­e­gy.

“It allows peo­ple to lean back at first and take in the set­up, but as you con­tin­ue to ref­er­ence it, lean into it and share it, you con­tin­ue to fuel its cause and own a piece of the cam­paign,” she said. “Great brands do just that. They stand for some­thing and give some­thing mean­ing­ful to their con­sumers, and some­times they can help change things for the bet­ter.”

Fur­ther, Kiger said it is only nat­ur­al for cam­paigns like this to sup­port Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, but they can also be part of year-long brand­ed efforts.

“The great thing about cam­paign and efforts like these is that they can and should be ever­green,” she said. “They are move­ments and should live as long as need­ed.”

What’s your take on these brand­ed efforts for Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day?