In the afterglow of the Lionesses’ spectacular triumph, it’s the perfect moment to examine how advertising has championed women’s football. While many recent Euros campaigns have been positive, they’ve also been frustratingly safe and conventional – lacking the creative edge that makes advertising memorable.

The campaigns featured here are different. They emerge from the very real prejudice that women’s football has faced and, in many places, continues to endure. Rather than simply celebrating the sport, they confront the ignorance and dismissiveness head-on.

Orange – La Compil des Bleues

This is simply extraordinary – an astounding idea executed with surgical precision.

Lucozade Sport – Three Lionesses

Nice play on Skinner and Baddiel’s “Three Lions”, with an unmistakable edge of bitter anger. It’s celebratory and defiant in equal measure.

Germany’s Women’s World Cup squad announcement

Germany’s 2019 World Cup squad reveal doubled as a very direct challenge to the ignorance they’d clearly grown tired of tolerating. No subtlety here – just pure, focused anger at decades of being dismissed and ignored.

Twenty Twelve – Perfect Curve: Women’s Football

This clip from the Olympic mockumentary captures what was probably the uncomfortable reality circa 2012: that women’s football was seen as having limited appeal. It’s painfully funny precisely because it reflects attitudes that weren’t entirely fictional at the time.

Hope is a marketing, creative and branding agency for charities and other social-purpose organisations. The Ideas Lab examines what makes effective (or ineffective) communications for these causes, charities and social-impact businesses.