The Dress for Respect
Schweppes
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
Ogilvy Brazil
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Fe´lix del Valle Art Directors Edu Cesar, Andre´ Oberg Copywriters Maria Clara Carda~o, Frederico Teixeira
Production Team
Production Company Volcano
Other Credits
Agency President Fernando Musa Planners Thais Fraza~o, Gabriela Rodrigues Account Team Paula Fernandes, Aline Messa Media Silvia Mekaru, Mariana Areia, Filipe Machado Content Studio Thiagio Frias, Luccas Ribeiro, Thea Rodrigues Client Client Approval Francesco Cibo´, Vinicius Limoeiro, Laura Hue, Bruno Allonso
Date
May 2018
Background
86% of Brazilian women say they have been harassed in nightclubs. Still, many men were unable to see a problem in this. Schweppes wanted to address the issue of harassment as part of its ‘Character Required’ campaign theme.
Idea
Luisa, Tatiana and Juliana were invited to wear a touch-sensitive dress at a nightclub in Sa~o Paulo. The dress had several sensors applied to its fabric, which registered in real-time when the women were touched without their consent. As they walked around the club and were approached by men, the information was sent to a control-unit via wi-fi, registering the number of times each woman was touched. By the end of the night, the interactions had been turned into revealing data.
The experiment was then published in a video, in which Schweppes encouraged men to rethink their behaviour and approach women with more respect.
Results
The campaign has only just launched.
Our Thoughts
I first got excited by the possibilities of haptic clothing when I saw the work of Australian designer Billie Whitehouse. She created ‘Fundawear’ for Durex, when lovers could turn each other on even if they were a thousand miles apart. This flips that premise of appropriate touch to provide a record of inappropriate touch. It’s a pointer to a future in which haptic clothing is common, when your running gear stores the memories of your previous runs and will let you know when you should ease off or when you can increase the pace. Futurist Thomas Frey has suggested you’ll even be able to inhabit the body of someone else when you wear their clothes.
This idea from Ogilvy Brazil is another step on the journey towards this haptic world. When maybe, just maybe, if a guy touches up a woman when she doesn’t want to be touched he’ll get an electric shock.