How one well‑designed event went beyond just engaging the audience - and changed national behaviour

When it comes to event legacy, not many of us set our sights as high as sparking real-world behaviour change and influencing the financial gender gap.

However, that's exactly what Christoffer Sapienza, SVP Creative at Norway’s largest bank, DNB, did back in 2019.

That was the year the bank launched a “girlsinvest” campaign to confront a stark truth: men owned 80 per cent of all private equity in Norway. 

To shift that imbalance, DNB took the conversation on the road. As part of the campaign, a nationwide series of events brought women together with local speakers and DNB experts to demystify investing and highlight why it matters.

The impact was immediate. After the launch, DNB saw a sharp rise over a short period of time in the number of female shareholders and owners of mutual funds in Norway. In 2021, just two years after the launch, the number of new women investors in DNB increased by 160 per cent.

Previously, it had taken DNB 20 years to achieve an increase of this scale. There are now more women than men among DNB’s mutual fund customers in the personal customer market.

Informed and engaged

Fast forward to 2026, and the role of the “girlsinvest” event has evolved further. Sapienza explains how audience awareness transformed.

“We’ve seen a real behaviour shift among attendees," he says. "In the early days, knowledge and engagement around investing were both low. Now we’re meeting a highly informed, highly engaged community. Our job isn’t to ‘sell’ the benefits of investing anymore - it’s to show them how to do it.” 

And that’s a community who’s engaged all year round, including a 50,000-strong Facebook group.

The “girlsinvest” event series, once a supporting element of a broader campaign, has now become its driving force - a clear example of how well-designed events can inspire lasting, measurable change.

·       Christoffer Sapienza is speaking at IMEX’s Exclusively Corporate event especially for inhouse event planners and managers on “How DNB created #girlsinvest and got women investing”.