AMVBBDO

Client: Refuge
Product: Refuge
Title: The Naked Threat
Media: Social/PR - IG, FB, Twitter
Country: United Kingdom
Date Of Campaign: September 2020

Background: Refuge exist to prevent domestic abuse. They campaign for changes to the way the State responds to domestic and gender based violence victims and perpetrators, so that women and children are better protected.In the UK, sharing an explicit image without someone’s consent is illegal, but threatening to do so is not; over 4m women have experienced this form of domestic abuse with male perpetrators going unpunished. Therefore our brief was to change the law. The UK Revenge Porn Helpline has seen calls about threats to share intimate images more than triple between 2017 and 2020, up 73% between 2019 and 2020 alone. Changing the law in the UK is an extremely difficult, time-consuming and competitive process. Therefore it was important the urgency and simplicity of our case was made clear to help it rise above the competing requests for government time.Refuge exists to protect women from domestic abuse; but can’t protect women from a crime that isn’t illegal. Our campaign therefore sought to expose this loophole in the law, and to pressurise the UK government into making The Naked Threat illegal.

Idea: In the UK, sharing an explicit image without someone’s consent is illegal, but threatening to do so is not; over 4m women have experienced this form of domestic abuse. Refuge exists to protect women from domestic abuse; our campaign therefore sought to expose this loophole in the law, and to pressurise the UK government into making it illegal. Without the budget and influence to lobby behind closed doors, we told real real survivor stories in a way members of public and the national press wouldn’t be able to ignore. We used digital and social media iconography to turn these survivor stories into modern day ransom notes and seeded them on social platforms with huge female audiences; “hacking” the Insta Stories of Cosmopolitan and partnering with Zara McDermott and Olivia Colman.‘The Naked Threat’ became a rallying cry for both the press and public to get behind. First, we created animated survivor stories in the style of modern day ransom notes. Then we hacked popular UK media publisher, Cosmopolitan’s Instagram stories, targeting their female audience with what looked like an ordinary article about sexting, but quickly morphed into a shocking survivor story. Next influencer Zara McDermott told her own story of image based abuse, fronting the campaign alongside real survivor Natasha Saunders. They took The Naked Threat campaign direct to the houses of parliament in an national PR event that made every major newspaper in the country. The Naked Threat campaign also featured in a BBC documentary about Zara. Finally, Olivia Colman directly targeted Home Secretary Priti Patel with a personal plea to change the law, again hitting headlines nationwide. All campaign comms directed people to email, tweet or message their direct either their MP or the Home Secretary herself, Priti Patel.

Results: This campaign had one aim: to change the law. We achieved that goal. On March 1st, the UK government announced that “Threats to share intimate images would be made illegal throughout England and Wales.” This change to national law has been described as “gold standard” legislation by the charity. In the first week, The Naked Threat campaign reached 835.7k accounts on Instagram, an increase of 1118.1%.