UNQUIET VOICES

Short List
TitleUNQUIET VOICES
BrandANAIS ASSOCIATION
Product/ServiceNGO
Category F04. Social Behaviour & Cultural Insight
Entrant CENTRADE CHEIL BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
Idea Creation CENTRADE CHEIL BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
PR BAD UNICORN Bucharest, ROMANIA
Production STUDIOSET Bucharest, ROMANIA
Additional Company ATELIERU Bucharest, ROMANIA
Credits
Name Company Position
Roxana Nita Cheil Centrade Group Creative Director
Adina Stanescu Cheil Centrade Group Creative Director
Ioana Zamfir Cheil Centrade Creative Director
Ileana Ghita Cheil Centrade Account Director
Mona Opran Cheil Centrade CEO
Monica Garbur Cheil Centrade Head of AV Production
Iulian Ionita Freelancer Editor
Paula Stan Cheil Centrade Head of Digital Development
Ioana Mischie Studioset Production Artistic Director
Sorin Baican Studioset Production Managing Director
Andrei Dutulescu Atelieru Managing Director
Monica Felea Bad Unicorn PR Director
Anca Spiridon Bad Unicorn PR Manager

Why is this work relevant for PR?

With next to no budget, we needed to raise awareness of domestic violence and make the victims ask for help. We decided to pivot our efforts in letting an old type of wrong surface: silent films have been normalizing forms of abuse towards women for 100 years now. So we switched it around. “Unquiet Voices” is a 40-minute movie where 7 real victims of domestic violence break the silence and give voice to abused characters in silent movies. The campaign sparked a national conversation. Newspapers, blogs, TV channels picked up the idea and echoed our message to the masses.

Background

Every 30 seconds, a woman in Romania is the victim of some type of domestic violence. Romania based NGO ANAIS Association could give them the support they need, but very few of these women (just 1%) gather the courage to talk about what’s happening to them and break the violent circle. So, we had the mission to create a buzzworthy idea from scratch that would really change perception and convince more women to turn to ANAIS Association for help, consisting of shelter, psychological and legal assistance. Our goal was to increase activity on ANAIS’ helpline, increase awareness of domestic victims’ real life stories and increase acceptance of victims and courage to recognize aggressors. For the larger audience, we wanted to make them more aware and broaden the understanding of the term “abuse” to the different areas it can manifest itself (physical but also emotional, psychological, financial etc.).

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

If we were to change the perception of domestic violence victims, we know we had to come up with a bang. The revelation was something we all watched, but not carefully enough. Several industries have normalized abuse towards women. Silent films have been hiding scenes of abuse towards women under the mask of entertainment for almost 100 years. Dozens of these silent movies lost their copyright on January 1st 2019, so ANAIS wanted to turn them into something truly inspiring. This was the birth of “Unquiet Voices” - a 40-minute movie in which 7 victims of domestic violence break the silence and give voice to abused characters in silent movies. We took images from 7 silent movies to create the movie. We matched the images with a victim's real story and then rearranged the scenes to fit the victim’s narrative. The voice of real victims was overlapped on the footage.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

The strong insight that we had was that we, as a whole, are blind and also deaf to domestic violence. To prove this, we selected a high-impact piece of content - silent movies, forcing the viewers to see them as never before. Key message was on the one side, inspiring other women to break the silence and on the other, urging people to listen to these “unquiet voices”. Main target audience: women who have experienced any type of abuse. We have learned that they are urban or rural, of all ages and backgrounds. Second target audience was a larger urban audience, medium to high income, educated but not when it came to domestic violence. Other supporting assets were developed around the movie - such as movie website, posters, tens of social media posts, movie trailers, cuts and sneak peaks, and many logistic materials with every event featuring “Unquiet Voices”.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

The 2 months campaign targeted people in different contexts, exposing them to shattering confessions. On International Women’s Day, we launched an online platform to promote the movie, www.unquietvoices.com, where women could watch the full stories and record their own story of abuse in order to be helped by ANAIS. The movie is being screened in big cinemas, broadcasted by national televisions, projected in highly trafficked art galleries and introduced as educational material in schools, colleges and even in the Romanian Court of Law. The campaign had strong PR amplification on various channels: local influencers were our ambassadors for breaking the silence making use of their social media power, several women’s print and online publications distributed the news of the campaign and the movie, and we also had strong presence on TV, radio, and in online shows, where the campaign has been widely covered in news, talk shows and other content.

List the results (30% of vote)

The campaign aimed at helping women who are victims of domestic abuse to speak up and indeed they have: calls for help to Anais’ info-line have increased with 62% during the campaign. The campaign touched a familiar cord and inspired a nation-wide wave of support: social engagement with the Anais Facebook account has increased with 70%, mostly organic; more than 60 online and print publications, over 70 influencers wrote or talked about the campaign. One of Romania’s top actresses became our spokeswoman and promoted the campaign at PRO TV, the top TV station in the country in terms of ratings with a golden minute viewership of over 700.000 people. Moreover, two of the biggest cinemas in the country have been playing a pre-movie campaign promo thus exposing the campaign to thousands of cinema goers. The movie was launched with a screened in a Cinema hall for 800 influencers and journalists and in an effort to influence young minds, it was also screened at the Psychology Faculty and a top Bucharest highschool for over 600 young viewers. With a minimum investment of 5000 Euro, the campaign generated over 3.4 million views and an earned media value of 1.2 million euro which represents more than 200% return on investment. Even international publications like Ads of the World, Little Black Book, The Stable and ADDS picked up and promoted the campaign.

Please tell us about the social behaviour and / or cultural insights that inspired your campaign

Romania is still a patriarchal country, where every 30 seconds a woman is the victim of some sort of abuse from men. This is an ever-growing issue in our country, but unfortunately there are a lot of stereotypes revolving the topic. Romanians misjudge these acts of abuse and direct the blame towards the victim, saying things like “it was her fault”, “she asked for it”, “the woman should be obedient”. These expressions are engraved in our collective mindset and it leads to situations where women can’t ask for help because no one takes them seriously. Another starting issue for our campaign was the fact that there are various types of abuse, but only the psychical one is condemned and is featured in the media. The psychological, emotional, economic abuse often goes unnoticed as women think it’s normal to be treated that way by their partners, so they rarely speak up.