The phrases we all use to excuse disrespect are the seeds of future violence against women. Stop It At The Start.

Stop It At The Start is a rally-cry to all people who influence young Australians, to help break the cycle of violence by encouraging them to reflect on their attitudes, and have conversations about respect with young people.

Carefully-constructed creative:

The central catalyst for conversation was a video that plays-out the cycle of violence. It uses relatable scenarios and common excuses to draw the link between disrespect, gender inequality and violence.

The final scene completes the cycle of violence, mirroring the original scene where the boy slams the door. But while the man appears enraged and menacing, the boy appears confused – unsure how he found himself in that situation.

The campaign tapped into three layers of influence:

1. Sparking a national conversation about disrespect and violence.

To spark the national conversation, it was initially distributed via influential publishers like Marie Claire, and in the first two weeks, we generated 16.3 million earned views, 253 pieces of media coverage, and 473,000 conversations on social media.

2. Influencers influencing other influencers.

These conversations became the campaign’s next creative vehicle. When the issue was discussed in social media, influencers from parents to public figures referenced the video to influence other parents, for example Eddie Maguire threatening to drown journalist Caroline Wilson, or Donald Trump’s “locker room talk”.

3. Advertising as a teaching aid.

The Respect.gov.au website served as a hub for educational tools like The Excuse Interpreter and Conversation Guide, as well as the video. Teachers played the video in classrooms, while others wrote editorial pieces for leading Australian newspapers.

“Attitudinal change takes time, but the campaign has had an unbelievable impact among our target audience.”

-Michaelia Cash, Minister for Women, 2016

67% Campaign recall (+22% over benchmark);

88% Message Believability (+51%);

79% Agree “violence against women starts with disrespect” (+16%);

8.5 million Australians have seen the campaign, absorbed its message and done something in response to it.

And the specific kind of behaviours they took reflected our strategic priorities, with the top three being:

33% of influencers reconsidered the way they behave towards others;

29% of influencers had a conversation with a young person about respectful relationships;

27% of influencers talked to friends or family about the ads;

53 million views (not bad for a population of 23 million);

YouTube Australia’s most watched video between April-June 2016;

476,900 page views on Respect.com.au;

1.2 million reactions in social media;

14,000 downloads of downloads of the influencer tools.