Brief

Building on the surge in media reporting of the day-to-day harassment of women and girls, the Live Fear Free campaign aimed to raise awareness of sexual violence and abuse, improve public understanding and provide practical support to victims and those close to them. The campaign also aimed to help bystanders identify and take action.

Delivery

With its “Call Out Only” message, Freshwater developed a simple, yet bold campaign line that undermined the commonplace trivialisation of sexual violence and cut through to three key target groups – victims, bystanders and perpetrators. Freshwater adapted this core message to multiple channels, from TikTok adverts to bus station posters. A coordinated digital advertising campaign rolled out across Facebook, Google Display Network (GDN) and Spotify.

To join up the online campaign with public spaces, Freshwater orchestrated the display of high-impact posters at over 50 train stations in Wales and on 86 passenger panels on Welsh trains. Digital bus shelter advertising delivered 330,000 plays while panels were placed in over 100 pub washrooms around Wales.

Freshwater also circulated a partner toolkit to gyms, colleges and universities, and distributed an emailer to 10,500 university students in Wales. Three gym chains supported the campaign, displaying posters and advertising digital assets on their screens.

Results

Freshwater’s campaign achieved a 15% increase in contacts to the Live Fear Free helpline, with 11,843 calls compared to 10,309 in the same period a year earlier. All forms of contact increased – emails by 85%, webchat by 37.5% and texts by 55%. While contacts from survivors increased by almost 20%, the biggest jump was in contacts from perpetrators – an increase of 1267%.

Over 10,000 website sessions and 11,500 unique page views built considerably on the 7,000 and 8,000 in the same period a year earlier. Over 7,000 of the 11,500 page views were for Freshwater’s ‘Call Out Only’ campaign pages. Campaign adverts made 6.8 million online impressions across four digital channels, while almost 5 million impacts were made across traditional radio. Adverts during the Six Nations reached an audience of over 90,000.

Searches for relevant terms totalled almost 14,000 over the campaign period, with searches for “stalking” and “harassment” increasing by 4% and 11% respectively. The campaign provoked a strong response on Facebook in particular, with 4,284 comments generated. While 1,794 comments were positive, the 2,006 negative comments – 73% of which were left by men – showed the campaign had made an impact. Facebook, TikTok, GDN and Spotify achieved above-average click-through rates.