Every month, the B&T team picks the best campaign from the preceding month. But, as the saying goes, if no one is there to hear the tree falling, does it make a noise? We checked in with November’s winner, Innocean, to see how its powerful campaign for domestic violence charity White Ribbon performed.
Updated 7/2/24: Clarified errors in campaign performance (our initial reporting had these lower than was in fact correct).
“I have to tell the client all the time because they are in the business of trying to stop male violence against women and you can be really down on yourself when everyone’s asking ‘Have you fixed the problem?’ Innocean CEO Jasmin Bedir told B&T about her agency’s work with White Ribbon.
White Ribbon, despite its entirely noble cause, has certainly not had the easiest time in recent years. It nearly went bankrupt, got caught in a spiral after being outed as accepting money generated by the pokies in a Sydney pub, claimed it was “agnostic” on abortion rights and had to nix a campaign that asked social media users to “sponsor an abuser”. On that last one, the charity said that users had “misunderstood” the message.
“We needed to create an attitude within the organisation that they can achieve something because they’re not a marketing organisation, they’re not-for-profit but their product is advocacy, training programs and not fixing the issue itself,” continued Bedir.
“I had to instil some pride into them because, if you work on this topic 365 days a year, you’re losing your mind”.
Bedir said that Innocean set some campaign and organisational KPIs for White Ribbon, starting with this campaign.
So, as a refresher, Innocean created a faux newspaper, featuring headlines and clippings from real news stories detailing the extent of violence against women in Australia. The 500 articles reprinted in the paper represented just one per cent of the roughly 48,000 stories published about violence against women in 2023 alone.
A total of 2,000 copies of the newspaper were printed and distributed to politicians, journalists, influencers, publications and men’s groups.
The newspaper followed a nationally representative research study, conducted by Innocean, indicating that Australian men are shockingly reticent to take action. While 86 per cent of men acknowledged that they play a critical role in the prevention of violence against women, a mere six per cent have actively helped (via monetary donations, volunteering time, educating themselves or others).
The campaign was supported through multiple channels, including national TV, out-of-home, radio and social. Innocean also created a digital and social media experience to demonstrate the number of women subjected to male violence.
Did it work?
By all accounts, yes — despite White Ribbon’s previous issues.
Bedir said that donations increased by 41 per cent — especially good, according to Bedir, as the campaign was running at the same time as Movember and the Voice to Parliament campaign.
Awareness increased by seven per cent, “One million more Australians than in September, which is good,” said Bedir. Movember, for what it’s worth, also saw an uplift in consideration but, according to Bedir, by not as much.
There was a four nine cent increase in consideration and the perceived importance of White Ribbon Day also grew by four per cent. There were three per cent increases in the understanding of the severity of the issue and in recognising men as the primary perpetrators of violence against women.
“The big question, ‘Did we have any influence on men?’ Yes,” said Bedir.
Understanding of White Ribbon’s mission among men grew by 37 per cent and there was a five per cent increase in consideration of support. More men also understood that there are different forms of violence — understanding of emotional, financial and coercion increased by nine, seven and 11 per cent, respectively.
“Not only were they paying more attention but they were also learning, which is really what we wanted. When you look at the numbers, these are small single-digit percentages but this is such a difficult topic to get across and, with such a short campaign period, we are super, super impressed,” said Bedir.
As a result, White Ribbon was able to put on its first corporate event, to help businesses ensure that they are providing a safe workplace from domestic violence (now a legal requirement). It also saw a huge 68 per cent uplift in web traffic following the campaign and an uptick in the number of businesses applying for its accreditation scheme to show that they are a safe workplace.
And remember, all the campaign needed to do was stop one man from perpetrating domestic violence just once, and it would have changed at least one woman’s life.
Previous B&T Campaign of the Month winners:
