“Not all disrespect towards women results in violence, but all violence against women starts with disrespect”. That stark line set the tone for Nine and Kantar’s Stop It At The Start presentation at IAB MeasureUp.
What followed was a compelling exploration of how Australia’s biggest media network leveraged its platforms to tackle one of the country’s most entrenched social issues, gender-based violence.
Despite widespread recognition that violence against women is a national crisis, far fewer Australians grasp where it begins: in childhood, in attitudes, in the everyday language and behaviours that may seem small but ultimately normalise disrespect. The Federal Government’s campaign aimed to break that cycle.
As Alysha Calder, group solutions lead at Powered by Nine, told the MeasureUp audience: “It can be difficult to censor or moderate the content that young people are exposed to online. It’s our job and our responsibility to better understand it so that we can help them navigate it and reject disrespect before it leads to violence.”
The campaign targeted the “influencers” of children aged 10 to 17, including parents, teachers, coaches, and grandparents, who have the power to shape conversations around respect.
To reach them, Nine deployed its most valuable asset: scale and trust. The network literally stopped its content at the start, disrupting TV, radio, print, digital and live sport, with unmissable messages fronted by Australia’s most recognisable voices.
During the NRL Grand Final and the US Open, broadcasts were deliberately interrupted to air PSAs about respect and violence. On the radio, beloved hosts paused their programs to hold raw conversations about domestic violence. Across mastheads, entire front covers were wrapped with half-stories that revealed the hidden consequences of “just words” online.
For Sharon Hilton, head of media at Kantar, this was proof of what can happen when measurement and creativity converge.
“The pride for Alysha really comes from being part of the team at Nine that worked on the strategy and solution behind how this important Stop It At The Start domestic violence campaign messaging appeared across the Nine Network. And for myself at Kantar, that pride comes from being part of the team… to truly quantify the effect of this unique and bold activation.”
The Results
The measurement results were striking. Kantar’s CrossMedia study found a 4.6 per cent uplift across the campaign’s core objectives, placing its performance 17 per cent above the established benchmark norm.
What made this even more remarkable was that the campaign achieved such results despite operating with less investment and reach than most of the campaigns included in Kantar’s database.
The effectiveness was driven by a combination of trusted talent, high-impact activations, and a whole-of-network strategy that ensured substantial reach and overlap across audiences. Three in four respondents agreed that Nine’s use of familiar personalities could positively influence attitudes.
At the same time, creative executions like print wraps and radio stunts outperformed Kantar’s norms on measures of branding, engagement and attention. Importantly, 60 per cent of the key audience of child influencers saw the campaign, with more than a third exposed across multiple channels. Half of the campaign’s total impact came not from any single channel, but from synergy, the channels working together to create an effect greater than the sum of their parts.
For Calder, impact is amplified when delivered in bold environments, disrupting sport broadcasts or wrapping mastheads. She urged marketers to think bigger and partner holistically with networks to unlock those opportunities.
She also drilled in the importance of measurement and understanding what is and isn’t working in campaigns from a media owner’s side.
“Measurement does matter,” Calder told the audience. “It’s important for us as a media network to uncover those insights to help refine future strategies to optimise investment and to ensure that every touch point contributes to a lasting impact, not just now, but for the future.”
The Stop It At The Start initiative was designed to prevent violence before it begins. At MeasureUp, it became a demonstration of what happens when media, government and measurement unite behind a social mission. And it showed, unequivocally, that media can be a lever for cultural change.
