The challenge
Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council and Rutland County Council pledged to tackle domestic and sexual violence across the area. As part of this, they commissioned The Campaign Company and Lambeth Communications to develop and design a campaign to raise awareness of the help and support available for victims and to get people to report domestic and sexual violence sooner.
The Campaign Company’s role was to deliver research to inform an insight driven campaign based on understanding the experiences of victims of domestic and sexual violence in Leicestershire and Rutland. We carried out research with victims to explore the barriers to taking action and seeking help as well as exploring what might have helped them to take action sooner.
How we approached it
Initial desk research was undertaken to understand the context within which the campaign was being developed and inform the qualitative research. Our researchers conducted face to face in-depth interviews with victims of domestic and sexual violence. Approximately 15 participants were identified by the domestic and sexual violence service and took part anonymously. The interviews were transcribed and analysed to develop recommendations for the campaign, its tone, key messages and the core interventions.
What happened
Our findings uncovered a plethora of barriers to not victims not seeking help or taking action earlier in abusive relationships. There was a clear need to address the fear associated with leaving and to break away from the negative, hard hitting domestic violence campaigns that participants were familiar with. From this insight, we recommended a campaign that focussed on the positives of taking action sooner and developed the core brand and messaging for the campaign: ‘How Many Times?’
Lambeth Communications went on to fully design and deliver a range of interventions as part of the campaign across Leicestershire, including campaign materials, film and social media and a network of community champions. (More information on the campaign here.) ‘How Many Times?’ went on to win an award for best use of research at the Comms2point0 annual communications awards in 2015. (More information here.)