2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

47% of married Egyptian women suffer from domestic violence and 99% of Egyptian women suffer from sexual harassment. And because females prefer to stay silent out of shame, they often don’t report it. Same goes for witnesses trying to mind their own business. Hence, violence against women became a reality society is used to instead of an abnormality they’re trying to fix. A campaign launched by UN Women to face society with its own doing. It normalized assault just like society does through the use of fairytales to capture the cycle of violence feeding on people’s silence. The aim was to provoke a reaction and push people to end the cycle of silence by speaking up.

Results and Effectiveness

The campaign took social media platforms by storm. It had 3M reach and 5M impressions. The campaign was covered by 36 online portals and it gained about $400K worth earned media. What started as a billboard campaign ended with women marching the streets of Cairo urging more women to speak up. And calls reporting violence increased by 25%

Creative Execution

Outdoor launched first, to get people to talk about the campaign, followed by TVC, and Radio. Outdoor illustrated what women go through behind closed doors, in key locations across Egypt. By day billboards showed a regular woman. By night, when backlit, bruises appear, changing the meaning of the story. And it keeps repeating like the cycle of violence. TV addressed different types of violence in form of fairytales in denial of reality. The use of projections served as a mirror to society showing the consequence of silence on women. Radio further confronted society with those shocking fairytales least expected.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The target was not just women, who are subject to violence, but society at large - everyone who witnesses violence against women and stays silent. The campaign showed how ignoring violence can be cancerous to society. The only way-out is by speaking up and confronting the problem. So the campaign had to air on different mediums to have a proper impact, reaching Egyptians across different governorates in Egypt.