The brief

Human rights charity The Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter, selected Birmingham to participate in the second year of its Inform Women, Transform Lives campaign. This global effort raises awareness about women’s right to information and helps cities provide women with information about beneficial city services. The focus of this campaign was promoting the help available to women who are experiencing domestic abuse, as per the Needs Assessment Report conducted by the council.

Working with The Carter Center and Birmingham City Council, we developed an integrated marketing campaign to raise awareness of the early and often hidden signs of domestic abuse affecting women in Birmingham.

Our approach

Through regular stakeholder engagement and liaison with regional domestic abuse charities and organisations, we produced three campaign concepts which highlighted an honest representation of unfortunate yet real experiences by local victims of abuse.

Following significant discussion and feedback on what is an extremely sensitive topic, we refined our concepts into the chosen campaign, titled “He Said”. The artwork consisted of six designs showcasing ordinary women from various ethnic backgrounds surrounded by real words and phrases provided by victims, which demonstrate the use of coercive control.

The artwork was reworked to suit several different channels and maximise reach including the campaign website, social media, out-of-home advertising (comprising of large format billboards, digital 6-sheets, interior bus panels, and poster boards), and branded promotional products (keyring torches and banner pens). In addition to the artwork, we also produced toolkits for use by the Council and third-party organisations, who wish to support the cause, including domestic abuse charities throughout Birmingham.

The campaign also featured a promotional video, bringing the issue of coercive control to life. Following the same visual style as the designs, we shot four women in different stages of their lives, all going through variations of coercive control and domestic abuse with the words and phrases animating around them. The video concludes with each woman bravely deciding to reach out for support and call the Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid helpline before displaying the necessary call-to-action.

The impact

Following our activity, we produced a comprehensive report covering data and outputs produced, challenges and obstacles faced, lessons learnt, and overall campaign impact. We also provided a significant bank of media showcasing the artwork live throughout Birmingham. Some of the key results include:

• Campaign artwork – designed and produced 6x campaign artworks featuring women from ethnic backgrounds relative to Birmingham.
• Campaign video – directed, produced, and edited a 1-minute 48-second video in four different locations, with four different actresses.
• Branded merchandise – produced 5,000x branded keyring torches and pens.
• Launch event – launched at the 16 Days of Action networking event on 27th November 2023 with around 40 people in attendance.
• Out-of-home activity – estimated total impacts across all sites:
  • 6,205,470 impacts.
  • 473,543 slots.
• Website activity – 39.6% of traffic to campaign website via direct link or QR code.
• Social media activity – over 6K organic impressions across Facebook and X, with an additional 750 views of the campaign video on YouTube, alongside a paid social media plan of recommendations.