Schweppes, a brand that has nightclub as its main point of sales and men as its primary essential target, needed to launch its new global positioning ‘Character required’ in Brazil. A belief about appreciate the adult life as the best moment of life and enjoying nightlife with elegance and respect.

While this suits perfectly across the globe, in Brazil it was still a challenge: although the abuse discussion is increasing, there is a notion that when a woman talks about it, she is whining.

Schweppes realized that building character isn’t easy and done overnight. We challenged ourselves to clash with our target. Even with a powerful and provocative speech, it was time to show what character really means and what men were actually doing. Social would be essential to help us launch the new positioning and bring awareness to women harassment.

As building character isn’t easy and to make men see and realize the harassment women face when going out, Schweppes created “Dress for Respect”. A dress made with an ultrasensitive tissue that register every touch received. 3 different women wore the Dress for Respect to a popular nightclub in São Paulo, Brazil. The dress sent to a control unit every information in real-time of the unconsented touches (where they happened, the intensity, duration) they received from men who tried to approach – or simply put their hands on them. With 6 hidden cameras and 2 disguised photographers, we could register what those men said and how they acted. The real-time action became a video, launching its new positioning ‘Character required’. Nothing more needed for this situation than character. There were no way men couldn’t see the harassment. For Schweppes, nothing more important than make them realize that harassment isn’t flirt.

As we had the challenge to bring awareness to sexual harassment in Brazil and had a very low budget to impulse the video, PR was a very important key to do it.

As much as we had our focused on our target, young adults, both women and men, we also wanted to sparkle the conversation to every woman that were harassed and every man that had harassed.

So, our PR strategy was focused on mainstream sources, helping us raise the awareness surrounding the sexual abuse, mainly in nightclubs.

Besides that, our message was powerful and relevant, and we were the first brand to talk about sexual harassment in nightclubs, so we had the chance to reach also spontaneous sources.

Instead of doing a lot of content with very low budget, we decide to do one single shot to apply to it efficiently: we focused it on Facebook with one video, with women telling their abuse stories and men saying that they are whiling, closing it with the whole creative idea. It was the content that launched the positioning in Brazil, also bringing to the target awareness to female harassment and, at the same time, make tangible what attitude builds character.

In Brazil, Facebook combines a broad penetration, potentially reaching more than 120 million people with active profiles, engagement tools, that would help us to be assertive in our goals, and also stimulates debates, with high impact in social behavior.

The Facebook video generated discussions about harassment not only in Brazil, but also globally. In less than a week, the video registered more than 600.000 views. After Brazil, USA was the country with most mentions, followed by Spain and the UK. The most related subject was the difference between flirting and abuse. Women shared it demanding change from men, registering about 97% positive feeling, related to the situation shown on the video. Men interacted too, criticizing those who disrespect women. The fact that a big consumer brand had finally talked about the issue was also recognized. In a market that is dominated by one leader, we had awesome results: increase in volume of 22% (2018 vs 2017), May (when we published the first time) and July were one of the highest growth peaks with 35% vs PY, Schweppes market share got 1.4pp of growth in tonics (May-December 2018 vs 2017).