‘When women come together, amazing things can happen’ – Kika Douglas on the film ‘Always a Woman’ for Wehkamp.

‘Using a song originally performed by a man and changing it into a song performed by multiple women is both inspiring and ties in really well with the rebranding of Wehkamp, reaching for a fresh demographic.’ – At this year’s Dutch Creativity Awards, the project ‘Always a Woman’ for the brand Wehkamp was awarded a Silver Lamp in the Craft – Sound category. With a brief to attract a new generation of women, the film is an ode to femininity – where six key moments of womanhood are captured in real, raw and honest moments. We revisit the project with Executive Creative Director at dentsuACHTUNG!, Kika Douglas.

A huge congratulations for receiving your Silver Lamp at this year’s Dutch Creativity Awards! Was it a big surprise on the day when your award was delivered?

It's always a surprise to receive an award. You always secretly hope you get it but until it happens, it remains a surprise.

As the Jury mentioned in their feedback report, ‘You can tell music was part of the early conceptual phase of the project, making for a strong synergy in the end result.’ Can you talk us through how you first approached the project?

Yes, from the beginning we knew we wanted to make a musically led film that talked about what it meant to become a woman, as well as all the changes we go through that make us become a more complex and unique woman as time goes by.

For this campaign, you repurpose the iconic Billy Joel love song She's Always A Woman and transform it into an empowering piece sung by women, for women. How did you decide upon using this classic song? Was it something Wehkamp had in the original brief or did this come from your side?

Of all the songs we looked at, we thought this was the one that told our story best as it captured the message perfectly – but we wanted to have it rewritten by a female composer to tell our story from our own voice. We shared several songs with Wehkamp and decided on this one together.

A beautiful touch to this song is how each line is sung by a different woman’s voice – could you explain how this came about?

Our whole film is about the different stages of life for women, which is why we follow six of them in key moments of their womanhood. It made sense creatively to have the song sung by six different women of six different age groups.

Could you talk us through how you selected these ‘key moments’?

We did interviews with different groups of women and asked them to tell us what had been the key moments that defined them as women. The truth is that several of these coincided and we saw that they could easily be summarised as six moments - the ones you now see in the film.

How was your collaboration with Wehkamp? Did they give you a lot of freedom or was there a close working relationship throughout?

It truly was a partnership, we had creative freedom and they did as well. I believe the best creative comes out of finding shared grounds, this film was exactly that.

What are your biggest takeaways/learnings from this project?

That when women come together, amazing things can happen. 90% of the core team behind this project was made entirely out of women; from our Film Director, Nina Aldering, to the Wehkamp team, our head of strategy, EP, Producer, Art Director... It felt like a sisterhood – we learned about each other, we trusted each other and we shared many stories along the way. I am really looking forward to the day I can do another project with this whole team, it was really special.

What’s the first thing you do when starting a new project?

Nothing and go for a walk. My brain always needs to digest things in the backend before putting all the pieces together to create something. Walking helps me do nothing mentally. That's where the magic happens.

How do you, as a team, get creatively inspired?

Sharing references for things that we like or that surprises us but also, sharing personal stories. In the end, there's nothing more inspiring than getting to know another human in depth and transparently. I think we get a lot of inspiration from there.

Best piece of advice?

Don't give advice. And if someone gives you advice, apply it with common sense...

Read more about Wehmap – Always a Woman in our Digital Awards Gallery and read the full Jury Feedback Report here.