In the UK a woman is murdered by a man every three days. The murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 by an off-duty police officer thrust this shocking statistic and the issue of violence against women into the nation’s consciousness. Countless stories emerged of women whose experiences of male harassment had left them fearful of walking alone after dark.

Channel 4’s single-minded purpose is to create change through entertainment, perfectly evidenced by Hollyoaks – their flagship drama that has sensitively tackled hard-hitting societal issues ranging from anorexia to self-harm.

Continuing their legacy of brave storytelling, Channel 4 planned a storyline with women’s safety at the heart, featuring character Maxine being attacked whilst walking home alone after a night out.

We had a powerful opportunity to use media to ignite the conversation around women’s safety, drawing new and lapsed viewers to Hollyoaks – the contemporary destination for programming that changes lives.

The strategic imperative for media became clear: to give men a women’s perspective on how it feels to walk alone after dark. To give men the opportunity to literally walk in the shoes of women. And in particular the young men who were at risk of disrespectful or even dangerous attitudes towards women, fuelled by toxic messaging from misogynists like Andrew Tate and freely available pornography.

That’s why we developed a digital, socially-led approach, taking our campaign into the places and spaces where young men congregate and chat with their peers. This was an opportunity to provide a positive counterpoint to the prevalent toxicity of social debate.

Meta Immersive became our lead partner to engage the young men whose behaviours we needed to shine a light on, recreating a women’s walk home after dark - the first of its kind for the UK entertainment industry.

The Hollyoaks Long Walk Home VR Immersive Experience coincided with the TV episode. This 5-minute piece of lifelike footage recreated a woman’s walk home after dark, seen through Maxine's eyes and narrated in character, giving voice to the thoughts in her head.

The walk featured night-time aggressors like lurking strangers, suggestive commentary, and violent threats. These visuals were punctuated with shocking statistics captured on screen to land the scale of the problem.

The experience was published through Meta Quest headsets and 360° video on YouTube and Facebook, with targeting skewed towards our young male audience. This included behind the scenes footage from the shoot and reaction to the experience from male Hollyoaks cast members.

The wider campaign included C4 promotional trails and continuity announcements directing viewers to the experience, along with an influencer-led launch screening.

Each element featured links to Rape Crisis and other helpful resources.

Our campaign drove crucial awareness and conversation about this topic.

It generated over £8 million of earned PR coverage.

The content achieved over 2 million views across all platforms and featured in Quest’s global Must-See Immersive Video playlist.

Two thirds of men said our campaign made them think differently about the challenges women face.

95% of viewers agreed that women are not responsible for preventing sexual assault against them.

But perhaps most importantly, the campaign generated strong awareness around women’s safety in the UK, generating over 2.4M post engagements and was even used by a school curriculum as a learning tool!