Unilever wanted to do more than ‘highlight the problem’ of domestic abuse. It wanted to revolutionise corporate thinking on the issue.

Unilever argued that the boundaries of work shifted during Covid, beyond the office and into the home – and so, therefore, have the parameters of corporate care. Yet while employers are typically proactive on issues like sexual harassment or mental health, domestic violence rarely attracts the same levels of campaigning.

It was, said Unilever, a type of systematic ‘muting’ that makes domestic violence so hard to defeat, where stigma and fear mean 60% of cases go unreported. Abuse thrives in silence.

Unilever therefore wanted to throw open the doors and engage frankly with its 150,000 employees about the issue. Our brief was to create a compelling internal campaign to animate Unilever’s support for its vast workforce – and ideally, in the process, inspire other companies to follow our lead.

We designed a campaign hook that would perfectly encapsulate Unilever’s determined position. ‘UNMUTE: End the silence against domestic violence’ was a smart twist on Zoom-zeitgeist social currency – “You’re on mute” – exploiting its light-heartedness to confront audiences with just how serious ‘being silenced’ can be.

The repeated campaign motif – lips moving, on mute – elegantly captured the foundational fear that prevents victims getting help: the belief that nobody will hear if they speak up.

The motif deliberately toys with everyday formats to stop audiences in their tracks: audio posts without sound, and selfie filters allowing users to ‘unmute’ themselves.

Its simplicity made it highly adaptable across channels: video, toolkits, events, digital. Unilever operates in 190 countries, so focusing on lips meant we could switch ‘portraits’ flexibly across regions, ensuring cross-cultural relevance for an issue without boundaries. Through everything, the ‘unmute’ symbol is instantly recognisable, memorable and on message.

The International Women’s Day launch date, 8 March 2021, gave us seven weeks from sign-off to delivery.

Our strategy centred on building visual, arresting assets that could travel easily and earn their own engagement – perfect for an online, homeworking era. Crucially, it also let us show female, male and LGBTQ+ figures, underlining the often hidden diversity of the issue.

With 10 days to go, energised by our ideas, Unilever asked us to launch a simultaneous external campaign.

We pivoted to a fully integrated strategy with crossover content at its heart and a new, headline-grabbing call-to-action: We would share Unilever’s trailblazing internal policy on domestic violence with the whole corporate world. Setting standards on ‘safe leave’ and other support, any institution inspired by UNMUTE could freely download and adapt it – or adopt entirely. In this way, we hoped to kick-start a sea-change in how companies handle domestic violence.

We wanted our execution to drive total concurrence between the internal and external campaigns in the period around International Women’s Day, encouraging cross-participation by employees and leadership in both forums, so that the power of one continually fuelled content and conversational momentum in the other.

Launch day, for example, began with a town hall from CEO Alan Jope to all staff worldwide; the afternoon built on this with a parallel external interview on LinkedIn Live with the founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke. Three days later, Unilever’s domestic violence policy was made public as a ‘template’ for any business, securing earned coverage; accompanied by attention-grabbing social content to drive engagement.

Further internal meetings showcased Unilever brands tackling the issue globally, plus real-life cases of employees escaping abusive situations. Woven between were sessions with Unilever’s 180 Diversity & Inclusion champions, and toolkits enabling satellite UNMUTE campaigns to be activated worldwide.

UNMUTE’s growth surpassed everyone’s expectations.

In the first five weeks: 12.68mn people were reached worldwide; 13.3mn impressions, total engagement of 1.54mn. LinkedIn and Instagram assets outperformed industry averages and Unilever’s own benchmarks, showing a public willingness to engage despite a completely different content experience.

Our primary objective, however, was never reach or engagement. It was much more foundational. We had to fundamentally confront ingrained attitudes to domestic violence at every level: employee, leadership, company, and eventually global employer culture. This was the revolution Unilever wanted to ignite.

UNMUTE’s true power showed up most tellingly not in ‘likes’ but small stories of unlikely engagement. Employees who might have felt UNMUTE wasn’t relevant to them, instead participated in droves: no less than 6,000 staff attended our town hall – a company record – and the uptake of domestic violence training has increased tenfold since launch. This isn’t a programme; it’s a movement.

The release of the domestic violence policy generated immediate business community interest worldwide, and Unilever was approached by several businesses to support its adoption.

The work continues. Unilever said throughout that this was a launch, not a campaign. Nevertheless, the ‘unmuting’ tells its own story: on launch day itself, nearly 200 employees got the help they may have needed by accessing Unilever’s services – reaching out for more information, requesting training or support. If only one was a victim, now encouraged to come forward, it means a voice that has finally been heard – and a life quite possibly saved.