UN Women decided to do the opposite of what was expected from a women’s rights campaign in Pakistan. We built the first anti-domestic violence campaign in the world that INVITED men to beat women. But at things they were good at.

Playing on the double meaning of the word "Beat," we launched with an online film which featured famous Pakistani women challenging men to beat them at what they excelled at, instead of pleading to men not to beat them. What first looked like a submissive retreat, resulted in a powerful statement that Pakistani women are strong.

Our idea was to transform the violent message behind the word itself, into something that stood for empowerment, strength, and confidence.

The larger campaign cleverly used the double meaning behind the term “beat,” and transformed it from a submissive suggestion to an empowered statement by powerful women.

For the direct leg of the campaign, we went guerilla to talk directly to our male target in two mediums. One was an activation taken directly to the running tracks at parks: we challenged men there to beat the record time set by the fastest woman in South Asia.

The activation was put online as a digital film that went viral.

Taking it a step further, we partnered with local shoe stores, that carried men’s running shoes, and were situated in regions that had higher domestic abuse rates*(i)*(ii) Whenever a man bought running shoes, he was challenged by a woman asking him to beat her with the very things that are a tool of abuse, only this time at a demanding race.

*(i)https://www.dawn.com/news/1061326

*(ii)https://www.google.com.pk/amp/s/www.dawn.com/news/amp/1163308

The conversation became viral and brought about a cultural mind-shift: portrayal of women in the media changed from weak to powerful, where other brands followed suit.

With a $0 media budget, the video racked up 2 million organic views*(i) in the first week alone, 296 million earned impressions*(ii) and an estimated $118 million in earned media.

Celebrities, talk show hosts and parliamentarians - both men and women - took up the issue. The topic of violence against women was trending in Pakistan,*(iii) while also being on prominent global media, contributing to domestic pressure.

The Pakistani government has worked in parallel to set up the first violence against women centre, implementing a new women protection law*(iv)

UN Women changed Pakistani men’s perception about women and inspired a large number of Pakistani women to stand up to abuse; women who now know they are unbeatable.

*(i)Facebook

*(ii)Sysomos

*(iii)Twitter trending data

*(iv)http://nation.com.pk/national/26-Mar-2017/violence-against-women-centre-opens-in-multan