Girls Scouts of America and LeanIn.org have teamed up to ban the word “bossy” from our vernacular and instead, encourage girls to become leaders. The campaign video includes Jennifer Garner, Condoleezza Rice, Sheryl Sandberg, and Beyonce who declares “I’m not bossy. I’m the boss.”
With 979 TV and Radio results in the past two days, the campaign to “ban bossy” is generating large-scale media coverage while trending online. Based on the numbers from TV and Radio, Beyonce and Facebook COO and LeanIn.org founder, Sheryl Sandberg are the greatest contributors to the growing media coverage.
Searching Critical Mention’s media monitoring platform for Sandberg alone results in 691 hits in a 24 hour period. Sandberg’s bold leadership style and bestselling book, Lean In, have made her a poster child for women in the workplace, and GSA’s partnership with her has already landed the organization plenty of earned media coverage.
The campaign has its share of critics, including Forbes Contributor, Micheline Maynard, who says that “There are far worse things than being called bossy” and proposes that “Bossy is not the same thing as being a leader, ” in her recent article.
The ban on bossy has resulted in a 40x increase of the word being used on TV and Radio over the course of one week. Bossy has been mentioned on TV and Radio 2,039 times in the last 24 hours, which is up from only 50 mentions on last Tuesday (3/4). The ban on bossy has resulted in a bossy boom on TV and Radio, and though the numbers reflect the word as being anything but banned, the earned media of this initiative is sure to please Girl Scouts of America and LearnIn.org.
