2015 Silver Best Creative Solution or Innovation
01 Dec 2015
Leo Burnett London
Karma Nirvana
Day of Memory, Part 1 Suffocation
The Team
Kit Altin - Planning Director, Sofia Sarkar - Senior Account Manager, Justin Tindall - Executive Creative Director, Phillip Meyler - Creative Director, Darren Keff - Creative Director, Tim Fletcher - Group Design Director
Contributors
Cosmopolitan magazine - Co-campaigner for an annual National Day of Memory, Henry Jackson Society - Authors of the report we produced for the cover, Erin Mulvehill - Photography
Campaign overview
‘Honour’-based violence (HBV) is sadly wide-spread in Britain, but woefully under-represented in both public discourseand policy. More than 2,800 cases were logged in 2010, but many thousands more are never reported. Despite the Forced Marriage Act 2012, the authorities were just not doing enough to acknowledge and tackle this abuse.
Karma Nirvana’s task was to raise awareness of HBV among key government influencers, asking them to take responsibility and state their commitment to helping prevent abuse.
Strategy
Even if they are aware of HBV, the authorities often ignore it as a rare and regrettable ‘minority problem’, not one they have the responsibility or ability to address.
Karma Nirvana’s campaign goal was to secure broad commitment to an HBV Day of Remembrance and for action to counter HBV generally. There was the opportunity to target key policy and public opinion influencers via an HBV report to be distributed in the Houses of Parliament but with HBV just one of many important topics on the agenda, the campaign had just seconds to stand out, make people care and encourage a sense of responsibility to act.
The strategy was to use the only communications tool available, the front cover of the report, to grab attention and demand engagement with HBV on a deep emotional level. To add pressure, Karma Nirvana worked with Cosmopolitan magazine to create a focused social campaign, driving public awareness and encouraging people to speak out in support of the Day of Remembrance.
Creativity
The creative solution drew on the shocking ‘honour’ killing of Shafilea Ahmed, a 17 year- old British Pakistani woman suffocated and murdered by her parents in 2004. The report was enclosed in a promotional copy of Cosmopolitan magazine, where the plastic cover wrap appeared to suffocate an image of Shafilea, shown struggling to escape. The act of tearing open the plastic symbolised the reader’s power to release these girls from abuse, and also put the report outlining the measures required for change in their hands.
Juxtaposing the sheer brutality of a real victim’s story with a magazine famous for encouraging women to be in control of their lives brought home the appalling repression and abuse these young women suffer, and prevented its audience from continuing to dismiss HBV as a “foreign culture” issue.
Results
In January 2015, an Annual National Day of Remembrance for the British victims of honour killings was officially declared at the Houses of Parliament.
High profile politicians, including the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary, publicly stated their ongoing commitment to tackling the issue, while all relevant government departments and agencies, including the policing authority, Department of Education and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices, committed to hosting conferences and training around the day to better educate staff. This will have a direct and positive impact on preventing future abuse and providing support to victims.
Social media promotion by Cosmopolitan magazine grabbed the attention of the national press, generating 28.5 million media impressions and more than 220 million views. 115,000 people signed a petition in support of the Day of Remembrance, making the request impossible to refuse.
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