Wunderman Thompson UK’s work for the National Centre for Domestic Violence has won the advertising agency two trophies.
Calls to the NCDV increased by a quarter as a result of Wunderman Thompson’s ‘abusers always work from home’ message during the height of the coronavirus crises.
The campaign won the not-for-profit or charity category at The Drum Awards for Content 2021 and the social purpose category at The Drum Awards for Marketing 2021.
In an interview with The Drum, an online news service for the marketing sector, Wunderman Thompson said: “We subverted the message that staying at home and working from home saved lives with the powerful thought: ‘Abusers always work from home’.
“This instantly created a strong response in people. Not only did the out-of-home [advertising] reach victims first-hand during their daily walks, hundreds of thousands of people and celebrities reposted or commented on the powerful social film – and shared images of the posters, helping us reach as many victims as possible.”
The agency added: “There was no official brief – we created this campaign proactively for our NCDV client having seen reports on the news about escalating domestic abuse incidents.
“We acted fast to let victims know they could access free legal advice from the NCDV. We had zero budget but the strength of the idea attracted a director/production company and media companies kindly gave us thousands of sites across the whole UK, resulting in 22m impressions.”
The campaign used traditional advertising hoardings, social media and a video as platforms to get the message across.
Wunderman Thompson also said: “The film lives on across social media to this day and the posters are also still live … [as] they continue to run it on any unbooked sites.”
