In recent years several high-profile murders in Australia’s major cities have put the issue of women’s safety at the forefront of public consciousness. This environment of fear has led authorities and media personalities to suggest that women should change their behaviour to feel safe, ignoring the fact that women were already living in extreme caution. Research by Plan International confirmed what we suspected - to repair this culture of fear, it was men who needed to change their behaviour. But it’s hard to change behaviour when you can’t understand or don’t consider there’s an issue.

The brief was to create a national conversation around female safety with an objective to encourage men to be more aware of how woman are feeling at night and we needed to do so with impact through earned PR channels creating a national conversation that would result in behavioural change.

To allow men to experience what women go through, we created a 360-degree track designed specifically for headphones. The track utilised binaural recording to accurately, and scarily, replicate how the streets sound to many women. This incredibly detailed soundscape allowed men to get into the mindset of a female; the sensation of a mysterious figure passing by, voices calling out from the dark, even the racing heartbeat that accompanies many womens’ journeys home.

We then partnered with Spotify to take Walk Like a Woman to a mass audience. They changed their rules, allowing the soundscape to run as a real track, by a real artist. We then promoted the artist using street posters, radio ads and Spotify placements - encouraging men to listen to what women have been hearing their entire lives.

Listeners were directed to the Plan website where we gave them simple behaviour changes they could make immediately.

Authorities suggest that women change their behaviour to feel safe. But women have always changed their behaviour: calling a friend, dressing conservatively, even brandishing their keys as a weapon. Research revealed a major contributing factor to the problem was the behaviour of men.

However, most men remain oblivious to the fears women deal with every day. And we realised that men could never truly understand how it felt to be a woman without experiencing it for themselves.

Most women would never do something as simple as wear headphones when walking alone at night – fearful of their surroundings. A normal city street becomes a place of fear.

By contrast, men have no such worries, wearing headphones at night. We decided we needed to reach them in the relevant environment. We needed a way to turn their safe space into the frightening experience recognisable to so many women.

The track launched on Spotify under a real artist’s profile. Scannable street posters led people to the artist’s page where they could listen to the track, as well as a series of shorter executions, focusing on different behavioural changes listeners could make.

We used social media influencers to spread it, and a PR push saw it appear on television (Studio 10), and national radio stations (3AW, ABC Radio, etc). It had a dedicated segment on Triple J’s Hack – a national current affairs program – and articles in all major newspapers.

The campaign expanded, with media outlets donating space to the cause; including Channel 7, ARN, Outbrain, Plakkit and JC Decaux – helping to kick off a national conversation. Every piece of communication led men to the Plan International website, where they could learn more about helping women feel safe at night, and help keep the conversation going.

The track was played over 50,000 times. Social media sharing and PR gave the campaign $882,000 in earned media, meaning our message reached many more men than our minuscule budget would normally allow.

Many media suppliers got on board by donating media space to aid the cause. We received $115,00 in donated media from Outbrain (digital), JD Decaux (OOH), Plakkit (OOH), ARN (radio), and 7Plus (catch-up TV).

On catch-up TV it performed above average, with 93% of views captivated enough by the message to watch the whole way through – about 30% more than the average.

Most importantly, visits to the Plan website increased by 150%, a direct result of our call to action. This told us that people were engaging with the message and wanted to learn how they could make a change, and help make women feel safer.