Launching the world’s first media buying business model that takes progress as payment.

CHALLENGE

How do you turn a magazine for him into a platform for her? You change the way you do business. For years, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit has been criticized for objectifying women. More recently, they’ve transformed into a platform that breaks stereotypes and beauty standards. But the world didn’t see or believe that they were making a positive change for women.

STRATEGY

We knew that talk wasn’t going to cut it. There were already too many brands out there whose support for women was all talk. Instead, we decided to present an idea that would change how we did business—and how the world saw us.  We wanted to practice what were preaching and were willing to lose millions of followers and millions in revenue to do it.  

How? We knew we had something brands wanted: 20 billion in earned impressions across a global audience of over 10 million. Advertising on our platform meant global attention and persuasion. So, we made change for women the key to unlocking it.

IDEA

We created Pay With Change, the world’s first media buying business model that takes progress as payment. This new model meant that any brand wanting to advertise or partner with us had to commit to making progress for women. Progress could mean internal policy changes or external causes; it could be an existing initiative or a new commitment. Only by creating that progress would they become eligible to advertise with us in print, digital, and social, or partner with us for events and sponsorships.  

EXECUTION

Pay With Change became the barrier to entry for all potential advertisers and brand partners to gain access to our audience. We announced the initiative in February, with an anthem film, launch page, organic social media, and media appearances with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s Editor-in-Chief MJ Day. The timing coincided with Super Bowl, also attracting audiences and brands.  

We wrote an open letter asking brands to join us and created a two-page spread in the magazine introducing Pay with Change to the world. We even left an ad page blank as a statement to show that we’d rather have blank pages than accept ads from brands not committed to women.  

For our B2C play, we dedicated our magazine’s back cover to all women––creating an AR experience where everyone could see themselves as a model on our cover.  

And finally, we announced that starting this year, SI Swimsuit will donate a percentage of every issue’s ad revenue to create the SI Gender Equity Fund, to further support women. 

Pay With Change made waves upon its launch, setting an industry standard for brands in how they show up for women. Our first-of-its-kind media buy initiative proved a seamless way to integrate women’s support in brands’ common-practice media buying structure and created a precedent for brands to follow suit.