2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Today, 1 out of 7 children in Lebanon is a victim of sexual abuse, and what’s even more outrageous is that no one dares to talk about it. Abuse often happens within a family and is never reported, as it threatens the family’s reputation and pride. Objective We decided to break the silence through a campaign that would make the people feel involved and encourage them to donate as much as possible during Himaya’s annual fundraising event. Strategy & Creation: Utilizing an integrated approach we built a shock campaign that pushed the society to react to the realities of the issue and face the taboo. We were present on all facets of Public Relations, utilizing activation stunts, media relations, and a large fundraising event to help boost donations to the NGO. Outcome: Break the silence, and encourage victims and witnesses to start reporting abuse.

The Brief

Himaya is an NGO that has taken on the fight to help create awareness and stop the sexual abuse of children. The goal was to create content that had to be news worthy and create a buzz to have the media talk about an issue that in any other context would be ignored as it is not a comfortable topic to publish. This needed to translate into a highly successful end of year Fundraising Event as Himaya relies solely on donations in order to sustain its activities and continue offering help and counseling to the victims and those that abuse has affected.

Results

Himaya’s team was hosted on the top 3 tv talk-shows, reaching an estimate of 450,000 viewers (Source: Ipsos Stat). Over 10 different publications printed stories. All PR activities engaged directly with over 30,000 people The campaign inspired many bloggers, boosting the online conversation. As a result, the campaign generated free media coverage worth USD 1,053,215 reaching 73% of the population Source: Ipsos Stat One month into the campaign, himaya received 257 phone calls from abused individuals asking for help. (Most cases were treated with specialized psychiatric professionals and social workers) The Fundraising event generated a rewarding increase of 25% from the previous year.

Execution

The campaign was primarily executed through traditional media, and the second was a PR lead phase that really established Himaya’s presence. Parks became the scene of our eye-opening stunt where parents accompanying their children were given a real wake-up call. We also distributed suspicious Candy Bags to parents, outside of schools to show them how easily their children could be approached. The campaign, resulted in an unprecedented amount of Media attention, putting the issue at the center of the conversation. Dailies and Magazines took the campaign to heart, giving us preferential presence and exposure. Himaya's campaign was broadcasted on the top 5 local stations, and became a frequent topic on several talk shows. Radio stations rushed to cover the story on various shows, as well as bloggers, boosting the online conversation. And all this attention, translated into a highly successful end of year Fundraising Event that helped create additional awareness.

The Situation

The taboo of discussing family issues to strangers is very relevant in Lebanese society. Add to it the fear of sullying the family reputation or honor, and we have a paralyzing combination that allows the sexual abuse to continue without options in sight. However, there exist associations for victims and people related to this abuse to get help from. Yet people still don’t do enough to slow abuse. This is why Himaya approached us to develop an awareness campaign that would break the taboos and allow victims and witnesses to finally come out of the shadows and tell their story.

The Strategy

We needed to have a highly taboo issue come out to the surface in Lebanese society, and become a topic that people were comfortable facing and supporting Himaya’s cause. The brand campaign that was launched on TV and then digitally was the first wave that started the buzz. We then took over and made it present in all PR mediums, ensuring a substantial share of ink in print media, and presence on other traditional channels via our media relational efforts. However, we also needed to interact with our audience experientially in order to really drive the message further, and we created several activation stunts that helped drive our message home. Sustaining this with a highly mediatized fundraising, created an additional layer of awareness with the Lebanese society that we also amplified on TV and print.