The Lebanese judiciary system never incorporated any kind of texts punishing domestic violence. After years of lobbying, a law against domestic violence drafted by the NGO Kafa was finally going to be proposed for voting in Parliament.
Kafa came to us to help them put pressure on Members of Parliament. Women representing 52% of the voting force, we decided to threaten the MPs with the one weapon that could make a difference: OUR VOTES.
Our statement was clear: Vote for us, We’ll vote for you.
Creative Execution
On Vote Day, we wanted to transform our virtual movement to further increase the pressure.
MP’s were meeting inside the parliament. We were outside on the street.
Everyone, including the media, was prohibited from entering the session. But we were able to enter the parliament through social media.
A private text message was sent to the MPs while the session was taking place, to ensure each one felt DIRECTLY AND INDIVIDUALLY the pressure of our red thumbs. This infuriated the president of the parliament, Mr Nabih Berri who stated live on TV, that he will not surrender to threats!
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.
In our country, when the Lebanese vote during elections, they soak their thumb in blue ink to ensure they only voted once and did not use someone else’s ID to vote twice.
We used this voting symbol and asked citizens to use their voting thumb, replacing the blue ink with the red color, the color of blood and injuries of violated women.
We asked Kafa activists, major influencers and key TV anchors to color their thumbs in red, post them online or show their Red Thumbs on TV shows with our message: “Vote for us so we vote for you”.
Results
• More than 22 million Twitter impressions in the first 2 weeks from 51 countries
• More than 20,000 physical and digital red thumbs gathered
• A 700% increase in online conversations about domestic violence
• A 350% increase in comments on Kafa’s Facebook page
• A 23% increase in followers on Kafa’s Twitter page[5]
• 1.7 million USD in earned media
• 2 million people exposed to the campaign from the TV news coverage only in a country of 4 million
On April 1st 2014, while our red thumbs were waiting outside the parliament, the law against domestic violence was voted.