Inside the Police Scotland campaign educating young men on the importance of consent
Stand won the ‘Best Public Sector’ category at The Drum Awards for Digital Advertising 2022 for its work with Police Scotland that aimed to educate men on sexual harassment. Here, we find out more about what went into this successful project.
Police Scotland undertakes annual campaigns that seek to reduce incidences of sexual assault by educating men about consent. ‘That Guy’ is a hard-hitting ad that addresses sexual entitlement in men and how seemingly insignificant behaviors can lead to violence against women.
The brief
With an estimated 10,000 rapes in Scotland each year, only 20% are reported to the police. As such, Police Scotland has undertaken annual campaigns since 2014 to reduce incidences of sexual assault by educating men about consent.
However, recent insight offers evidence that, contrary to established thinking, the majority of men do understand consent but choose to ignore it. And so for this campaign, it was essential to move away from the previous focus on educating men about consent and instead turn the focus onto the links between overt male sexual entitlement and serious sexual offending. The audience was young Scottish men aged 18 to 35.
The objective was to start a conversation around male sexual entitlement, the importance of self-reflection and the role men can play in challenging each other’s behavior. The call to action was to visit a website exploring consent, developed by Police Scotland.
The idea
The campaign seeks to capture the idea that decision-making is skewed by male sexual entitlement, which in practice means men assuming consent where none is given.
Sexual entitlement starts with assuming a right to a woman’s attention and can end with rape. Sexual entitlement is a direct consequence of the patriarchal attitudes and gender inequalities that exist in society. It’s only by recognizing those inequalities and how they influence male behavior that we can reduce and ultimately end male violence.
The spot features men speaking directly to camera, addressing each other and calling out increasingly inappropriate behaviors. The video bears the caption: ’Most guys don’t look in the mirror and see a problem. But it’s staring us in the face. Sexual violence begins long before you think it does.’ It ends on the slogan: ’Don’t be that guy.’
The results
Long-term evaluation against crime and behavior statistics will be ongoing over the course of several years. However, digital engagement was high. Paid-for ROI accrued 4.8m digital ad impressions, 32,000 click-throughs to the website. Film views sat at 4m+ views of main 60-second campaign film and 3m+ views of the first campaign tweet alone.
There were 2.3m social media engagements, with 34,000 original uses of the hashtag #DontBeThatGuy. This collectively resulted in new partnerships with Scottish Rugby as well as multiple Scottish colleges and universities.