GRACE MESSARRA
SENIOR COPYWRITER
Pay With Change
For years, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit was known for objectifying women. More recently, they’ve transformed into a magazine for all women, breaking stereotypes and beauty standards. But the world still didn’t believe that. We needed to show them we mean business. So we changed the way we do business.
​
How? We knew we had something brands wanted. Every year, SI Swimsuit issue garners over 20 billion in global earned impressions across an audience of 10+ million. Advertising on our platform meant world recognition. What if progress for women was the key to unlocking it?
​
We created Pay With Change, the world’s first media buying business model based on progress, not profit. With this new model, any brand wanting to partner with us must commit to making progress for women. Whether by implementing internal changes, supporting external causes, bolstering existing commitments or launching new initiatives, only though progress would they become eligible to advertise with us in print, digital, and social, or partner with us for events and sponsorships. Pay With Change became the barrier to entry for advertisers to access our audience. Effectively, we gated our biggest revenue stream to prove our brand purpose.
The Launch x
#CoverForAll
We announced Pay With Change in February with an anthem film, launch page, organic social media, and media appearances as well as a letter from the editor (which I ghost wrote) by 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 in an initiative called #CoverForAll, 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.
 |  |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |
The Results
We risked our entire business to create progress for women through Pay With Change. And it paid off. We gained advertisers, audiences, and accolades. The launch of the program generated 86 media placements with 2.8 billion impressions and 10.4 million in earned social impressions. As a result of our purpose-driven platform, we also saw a 122% increase in positive social sentiment from women. In addition, our open letter and AR experience was included in the annual issue, on average generating 20 billion earned impressions. Brands also joined our cause. We saw a 47% increase in brand partnerships for SI in the first three months.
