Domestic abuse is an uncomfortable and taboo subject – but to successfully drive awareness and action you need to find a way for people not to turn off or turn away.

To make the unwatchable watchable we created a beautifully powerful but intense and shocking dance routine which told the story of a woman in an abusive relationship, but in way that didn’t put viewers off.

By employing one of the world’s most experiences choreographers and teaming him up with a multi-award winning director and dancers (a couple in real life) we were able to do this.

It is worth noting that everyone who worked on the campaign donated all their time for free with two parties investing their own money in the project.

The process began with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, associate artist at Sadler’s Wells, choreographing the routine with Noam Murro, the director, and the dancers. Due to time and budget constraints the rehearsals were fast and furious with the dancers having much less time than usual to prepare.

The shoot was similarly pressured by time constraints but everyone worked long and grueling hours, to get it made because they believed in the project.

We launched the film with a live dance which took place at lunchtime in the busy Regents Place business district in North London – the dancers performed their routine to onlookers who shared and tweeted to the #breaktheroutine hashtag while trained Victim Support.

In the week post launch Victim Support reported 12,200 website visits with 70% first time users. NCDV saw a 74% uplift first time visitors.

The film was watched more than 700,000 times on Instagram – with 400,000+ coming from Ellie Goulding. It was watched more than 60,000+ times on YouTube.

The film drove a huge amount of PR with biggest hits being Sky News Sunrise, Huffington Post, Yahoo News and Psychologies magazine.

The launch tweet was retweeted 370 times and liked 647 times. Ellie Goulding’s first Tweet received 596 retweets and was liked 1,663 times.