Reese Witherspoon, actor, and founder, Hello Sunshine, announced the launch of Sunnie, a brand to reach out to Gen Z on day three of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Witherspoon was in discussion with Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer, e.l.f. Beauty.

Before she revealed the launch of Sunnie, she spoke about why she launched Hello Sunshine seven years ago.

“Back in 2011, I was reading a script that came in for me. I was an actor for 20 years and had done a lot of comedies and dramas. But I was reading scripts that were demoralising and borderline misogynist. In one script a guy was joking about the girl’s breasts. I didn’t want to be part of it and certainly didn’t want my daughter to see it. My manager told me how every female lead wanted this role. That’s when I figured that when women aren’t part of the creation process, such scripts come about,” she said.

“I complained about it. But my mother taught me complaining is no good, and one must look to find solutions. And that’s what I did. I was looking to auction books and turn them into movies. The first two were Wild and Gone Girl. We went on to shoot more films. I saw the power of partnership when we worked with Nicole Kidman and then with Jennifer Aniston,” she said before stating that partnerships are imperative for her as ‘1+1 can sum up to 5 and not 2’ when they work.

She also stated that Hello Sunshine puts women at the centre and doesn’t create, big premium movies, but connects to audiences through every possible touch point.

After the films, the next step of Hello Sunshine was to partner with brands.

She explained, “We help create premium content to connect with audiences to create through real, authentic content. That’s been fun and rewarding parts of Hello Sunshine.”

She also spoke about how some portray social media to be negative, but she thinks of it as the contrary.

“You would be hard-pressed to find that an actor who started in the 90s not feeling ignored or objectified. The media told people what to think of us. So, when social platforms came – they allowed us to write our own lives. Hello Sunshine has given women the chance to tell their stories in their worlds.  There’s so much negative around social media, but it’s helped us create an online community into the real world offline,” she added.

The duo then spoke about e.l.f’s ‘Too Many Dicks’ campaign.

“It’s a similar story to Reese, where I was solving an issue for my younger self. I was too belittled in corporate America. I was treated as a second-class citizen. I wanted to do this for other women. Of the 4,100 publicly traded companies – only one company stood out in terms of representation which had 78% women and 44% diverse, and that was e.l.f,” explained Marchisotto.

She added, “Women and diverse voices needed to be in the highest seat of power. We found out that there were more people named Dick and Richards than women on the board of directors of these companies and that became our campaign.”

Witherspoon then revealed the launch of Sunnie.

“Hello Sunshine has been around for seven years now. Now, I want to take the ideology and research to the younger generations and reach them. Sunnie has an advisory board of teenage girls. They are athletes, from STEM, from fashion, and AI,” she stated.

The talk ended with Witherspoon sharing a piece of advice for creatives and marketers to reach the next generation.

“Listen and watch people around you like family members. Watch their behaviour and where it’s going,” she said.