47% of married Egyptian women suffer from domestic violence and 99% of all women suffer from sexual harassment. Females prefer to stay silent on violence out of shame and thus end up not reporting it at all. Same goes for witnesses trying to mind their own business. Hence, violence against women became a reality society is used to instead of an abnormality they’re trying to fix.

A campaign launched by UN Women to face society with its own doing. It normalized assault just like society does through the use of fairytales to capture the cycle of violence feeding on people’s silence. The aim was to provoke a reaction and push people to end the cycle of silence by speaking up.

Outdoor launched first, to get people to talk about the campaign, followed by TVC, and Radio.

Outdoor illustrated what women go through behind closed doors, in key locations across Egypt. By day, billboards showed a regular woman. By night, when backlit, bruises appear, changing the meaning of the story. And it keeps repeating like the cycle of violence.

TV addressed different types of violence in form of fairytales in denial of reality. The use of projections served as a mirror to society showing the consequence of silence on women.

Radio further confronted society with those shocking fairytales when least expected.

The campaign ran for one month starting 25 Nov 2015, the first day in the “12-days international campaign to end violence against women”. When the campaign became talk of town in Cairo and gained national attention, the original media plan got extended for an additional month and a half.

The campaign took social media platforms by storm. It had 3M reach and 5M impressions. It was covered by 36 online portals. And local artists manipulated photos of Arab celebrities showing them bruised under the campaign hashtag.

The campaign was covered by local and international media and it gained a total of $400K worth earned media. Finally, women marched the streets of Cairo in protest for their rights, urging other silent women to also speak up. And calls reporting violence at the National Council for Women in Egypt increased by 25%

The target was not just women, who are subject to violence, but society at large - everyone who witnesses violence against women and stays silent. The campaign showed how ignoring violence can be cancerous to society. The only way out is by speaking up and confronting the problem.

So the campaign had to be placed in different governorates across Egypt, to reach Egyptians of different geographics and backgrounds. And it was key that the billboard was placed in high traffic areas to reach as many people as possible followed by TVC and radio.

UN Women aim to increase women’s leadership and participation in all areas that affect their lives; to increase women’s access to economic empowerment and opportunities, especially for those who are most excluded; to prevent violence against women and girls and expand access to survivor services, to increase women’s leadership in peace and security and humanitarian response; to strengthen the responsiveness of plans and budgets to gender equality at all levels.

The brief was to challenge the Egyptian society and challenge the culture of silence when it comes to violence against women. The objective was to provoke a social reaction and push people to end the cycle of silence by speaking up.