Free the forced

Background

The UN has estimated that around the world each year, some 60 million girls and young women under the age of 18 are forced to marry without their consent.

These young women faced lives without love and without hope.

In Germany each year, 3,500 women ask for help either because they are being abused or because they are struggling to cope in their forced marriages.

The United Nations Association of Germany and the German Committee of UN Women wanted to raise awareness of the issue and provide a way to help its victims.

Idea

The creative concept was to choose a place in Germany famous for its associations with love and young lovers and to create an installation there which was the very opposite, an installation that symbolised entrapment and imprisonment.

Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne had become a destination for couples to pledge their eternal love for each other. What they did was to place ‘love padlocks’ on the bridge fencing. It was thought that there were around 160,000 padlocks on the bridge.

The agency team added 3,500 blue padlocks to their number in one night, the blue locks spelling out ‘FREE THE FORCED’.

Each lock represented a German woman who had been forced into marriage. And each had a QR code printed on one side. Passers-by who scanned the code were taken straight to a website where they could get more information, make a donation and get a four-digit code which allowed them to unfasten the padlock and take it with them, as a reminder of the problem as well as a thank-you for their donation.

As the padlocks were removed, so the slogan ‘Free the Forced’ disappeared.

Results

It took just three days for the slogan to disappear with almost all the padlocks unlocked.

Social media was particularly busy during the campaign.

• Around 470,000 people visited Hohenzollern Bridge
• Over 570,000 unique people talked about Free the Forced and shared pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr.
• Activity on the United Nations Association of Germany Facebook page increased by 400%
• Mainstream media covered the campaign so the story reached 5.3 million people in the first three days alone.

Because of the positive feedback, there were plans to roll the Free the Forced campaign out in other major cities.

Our Thoughts

At the heart of this was the insight that most passers-by would own a smart-phone and would therefore be able to access the QR code.

In many ways, then, this should be a Mobile campaign rather than Outdoor. But that’s the marvellous thing about ideas today. They cross categories.

For me this is a great example of ‘right time, right place, right message’. It introduces a chillingly unexpected suggestion to those celebrating love that not everyone is as lucky as them.

By integrating mobile phones into the campaign, the idea had more emotional impact than any traditional TV spot could ever have done.