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Overview
White Ribbon Day 2024 introduced a bold campaign, "It Starts with MEn," emphasising the critical role men play in creating a culture free from gender-based violence. Bravand partnered with the organisation to deliver comprehensive creative branding and collateral, ensuring the campaign resonated with diverse audiences while maintaining consistency across platforms and materials.
The creative idea
Led by the brilliant client team who briefed in the direction of "It Starts with Men,", the Bravand creative team wanted to focus on powerful visuals that not only aligned with White Ribbon’s mission but also appealed to men of all ages. We knew the cool factor would be important - and looking at insights from the 2023 campaign where t-shirt sales weren’t really hitting the mark- we went bold this year with the brief “it needs to look f**king cool on a t-shirt”.
Taking inspo from rock and punk bands such as IDLES and Never Mind the Buzzcocks , fashion directions that broke the mould, and a pure white on black direction (a literal vacuum for colour), the identity work developed into an edgy, bold statement that could be worn with anything - from t-shirts, to social posts.
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The roll out
We then worked on roll out of the design across a range of supporting templates and materials.
The key elements included:
- Main Artwork: A striking visual identity that captured the campaign’s central theme of accountability and empowerment, led by Emma Wood, Creative Director at Bravand.
- Landing Page: An engaging, user-friendly page on the White Ribbon website designed to inform, inspire, and drive action from visitors, with UX design by Alexa Sielaff.
- T-Shirt Artwork: A wearable campaign extension that featured bold designs encouraging visibility and support for the cause.
- Social Templates: Customisable templates for social media that allowed the organisation to share campaign messages and engage with their online community.
- Resource Templates: Tailored materials for business and ambassador engagement, equipping supporters with tools to spread the campaign’s message effectively. The delivery of all creative assets was expertly managed by Agnieszka Kowalczuk-Hum, Digital Project Manager at Bravand.
Expanding the Reach: School Resources
Building on the success of the core branding, Bravand was asked to extend the campaign’s reach to schools, ensuring the message was age-appropriate and impactful:
- Secondary Schools: Resources were developed to align with the "It Starts with Men" theme but tailored to a slightly younger audience and the client team’s specific ambitions to galvanise their passion into the White Ribbon cause.
“Change starts with me” rang much better with our teenage audiences and brought with it a lot more inclusivity across both young men and women in secondary school classrooms.
Supportive resources included single sheet guides and presentations were designed and uploaded to the website for secondary school teachers and students to download and share.
- Primary Schools: To ensure accessibility for younger audiences, Bravand worked with the White Ribbon UK team to reimagine the campaign as "Kindness Starts with Me.”, bringing a brighter, warmer colour palette that kept within brand, but enabled teachers to talk to kids in a way that would promote listening and understanding, This included:some text
- A primary school video, combining engaging visuals and simple messaging to encourage kindness and empathy.
- Custom-designed resources, featuring softer, more approachable artwork tailored to a younger demographic, designed by Alfie Bradbury, creative intern from Sheffield UTC
Results and Impact
Not only was this a ruddy awesome project to work on, NOT ONLY did it deliver a cohesive and impactful campaign for White Ribbon Day 2024 BUT it also extended the White Ribbon UK influence across different audience segments.
By adapting the messaging for schools, Bravand and their awesome client team ensured the campaign's values of respect, kindness, and accountability resonated with future generations in an appropriate way.
The "It Starts with MEn" campaign exemplifies this team of client and agency's ability to create meaningful branding that drives awareness, action, and long-term cultural change.
To check out the campaign web page, video and all other resources - see the campaign landing page here: https://www.whiteribbon.org.uk/wrd24
Credits
- Core Branding Work: Emma Wood, Creative Director at Bravand
- Primary School Materials: Alfie Bradbury, Creative Intern from Sheffield UTC
- Digital Project Management: Agnieszka Kowalczuk-Hum
- UX Design: Alexa Sielaff
- Strategy & Direction: Jilly Cross
