Why Unilever looked internally to turn up the volume on domestic violence

Unilever argued that the boundaries of work have shifted during Covid-19, beyond the office and into the home – and so, therefore, have the parameters of corporate care. Yet while employers are typically proactive on issues like sexual harassment or mental health, domestic violence rarely attracts the same levels of open campaigning.

It was, said Unilever, a corporate version of the ‘muting’ that makes domestic violence so hard to defeat socially, where stigma and fear mean 60% of cases go unreported. Abuse thrives in silence.

Unilever therefore wanted to throw open the doors and engage frankly with its 150,000 employees about the issue. Our brief was to create a compelling internal communications campaign to animate Unilever’s plans — and ideally, in the process, inspire other companies to follow our lead.

The strategy

Affecting 1 in 4 women in their lifetimes, domestic violence has long been a defining issue in the struggle for women’s rights. It knows no real limits, however: Men (1 in 7) and transgender people (1 in 2) are shockingly frequent victims too; LGB people as much as heterosexual ones.

The real challenge is that 60% of cases go unreported, mostly because victims fear they will be ignored. Silence defines domestic violence. Even friends will often unconsciously shy away from involvement, through an ingrained sense that it’s ‘a private matter.’ Abuse thrives in such secrecy.

Unilever argued that, unrecognised, the same taboos had long shaped corporate attitudes too: Domestic violence rarely attracts week-long HR campaigns; more typically it is ‘support available on request’. Employers were, said Unilever, unconsciously mirroring the hands-off attitude upon which domestic abuse depends. Our goal was to change that forever.

We designed a campaign hook that would perfectly encapsulate Unilever’s determined position. ‘Unmute: end the silence against domestic violence’ was a smart twist on a piece of Zoom-zeitgeist social currency – “You’re on mute” – exploiting the concept’s light-heartedness to confront audiences with a recognition of just how serious, in fact, ‘being silenced’ can be.

The repeated campaign motif – lips moving, on mute – elegantly captured the foundational challenge we were addressing: victims’ fears that nobody will hear them, even if they speak up.

The concept’s clean simplicity made it highly adaptable to a range of assets: videos, toolkits, training and Instagram filters (allowing users to ‘unmute themselves’). Unilever operates in 190 countries, so the visual focus on lips allowed us to switch in new ‘portraits’ across regions, enabling cross-cultural as well as cross-gender diversity. And through everything, the classic ‘unmute’ symbol provided ideal branding: instantly recognisable, memorable and perfectly on message.

We would launch around International Women’s Day, 8 March 2021, giving us seven weeks from sign-off to delivery.Our strategy centred on building a highly visual campaign – perfect for online during a homeworking era, and enabling us to show male and LGBTQ+ figures among the survivors’ stories, underlining the diversity of the issue.

The campaign

With 10 days to go, energised by our ideas, Unilever asked if we could launch a simultaneous external campaign as well.

We quickly pivoted to a new, integrated strategy with crossover content at its heart and a new, headline-grabbing external call-to-action: We would share Unilever’s trailblazing internal policy on domestic violence with the whole corporate world. Setting standards on ‘safe leave’, guidance, and support, any institution inspired by our campaign could freely download it and adapt it – or adopt it entirely. In this way, we hoped to kick-start a sea-change in how all companies handled domestic violence.

Our primary objective during execution was to ensure total concurrence between the internal and external campaigns, encouraging cross-participation by employees and leadership in both forums, such that the power of one continually fuelled content and conversational momentum in the other.

Launch day, for example, began with a town hall from Unilever CEO Alan Jope to all staff worldwide; the afternoon built on this with a parallel external interview on LinkedIn Live with the founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke. Three days later, the external launch of Unilever’s domestic violence policy was followed by an internal town hall featuring two employees who had used Unilever’s support to escape abusive situations.

Woven between were toolkits for managers and training for employees, including a session with Unilever’s 180 Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) champions to give them the tools to create satellite ‘Unmute’ campaigns in local sites worldwide.

The results

Within five weeks from launch, Unmute’s growth was extraordinary: 12.68mn people reached worldwide; 13.3mn impressions; total engagement of 1.54mn.

Our primary objective, however, was never reach or engagement, nor even ‘behaviour change’ alone. It was much more foundational. We first had to fundamentally confront ingrained attitudes to domestic violence at every level: employee, leadership, company, and eventually throughout global employer culture. This was the revolution Unilever wanted to ignite.

Unmute’s true power, therefore, showed up most tellingly not in ‘likes’ but in the personal stories of unlikely engagement. Employees with no experience of domestic violence, for example, who might have felt Unmute wasn’t relevant to them, instead participated in droves: 6,000 staff attended our domestic violence-policy town hall – a company record – and the uptake of domestic violence training has increased tenfold since launch. This isn’t a programme; it’s a movement.

The release of the domestic violence policy generated immediate interest from the business community worldwide, and our work now is to embolden others to follow our lead. Following the launch, Unilever was invited to showcase Unmute at the DIAL Global summit (a community for Diverse Inclusive Aspirational Leaders), to show other leaders how to make brave choice and bring about real change.

In the five weeks following launch, 200 employees accessed Unilever’s domestic violence services – reaching out for more information, requesting training or seeking support. If only one of them was a victim, encouraged now to come forward for help, it means a voice that has finally been heard – and a life quite possibly saved.

This project was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2021 and The Drum Awards for PR 2021. To find out which Drum Awards are currently open for entry, click here.