SCHOOL FOR JUSTICE

TitleSCHOOL FOR JUSTICE
BrandFREE A GIRL MOVEMENT INDIA
Product / ServiceA SCHOOL AND EDUCATION PROGRAMME
CategoryE01. Integrated Campaign led by PR
EntrantFLEISHMANHILLARD INDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Idea Creation J. WALTER THOMPSON AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
PR FLEISHMANHILLARD INDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Production J. WALTER THOMPSON AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Additional Company FREE A GIRL MOVEMENT Haarlem, THE NETHERLANDS
Additional Company 2 NEW AMSTERDAM FILM COMPANY, THE NETHERLANDS
Additional Company 3 MASSIVE MUSIC Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Additional Company 4 HECTIC CONTENT Mumbai, INDIA
Additional Company 5 MRTN EDITING Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

Credits

Name Company Position
Yusuf Hatia FleishmanHillard Senior Vice President & Senior Partner, Managing Director, India
Bas Korsten JWT Creative Partner
Marcel Hartog JWT Executive Creative Director
Friso Ludenhoff JWT Creative Director
Maarten Vrouwes JWT Creative Director
Guney Soykan JWT Art Director
Erik-Jan Koense JWT Business Director
Jessica Hartley JWT PR Director
Catherine van Acker JWT Senior Concept Producer
Linda Jansen JWT Concept Producer
Sanne Kragten JWT Concept Producer
Lotte de Rooij JWT Screen Producer
Reiner Slothouber JWT Digital Producer
Angelique Schreuders JWT Connection Strategist
Lex Noteboom JWT Strategist
Lisse Mastenbroek JWT Strategist
Tim Arnold JWT Video Editor
Robert Harrison JWT Visual Designer
Ronald Mica JWT Visual Designer
Juliette Stevens New Amsterdam Film Company Director
Evelien Hölsken Free A Girl Co-founder
Nicole Franken Free A Girl International Campaign Manager
Tripta Biekram Free A Girl International Campaign and Program Coordinator
Vaibhavi Parekh FleishmanHIllard Account Director
Kaveri Roy FleishmanHIllard PR Counsellor
Kaizin Sadri FleishmanHIllard PR Counsellor
Esha Jolly FleishmanHIllard PR Counsellor

The Campaign

The School for Justice takes the victims of sex trafficking out of prostitution and into prosecution. A school and an education programme, the world’s first School for Justice was launched on April 6, 2017 in Mumbai. The School for Justice is working with some of India’s most respected law universities to train girls to become public prosecutors with the power and determination to challenge India’s legal system from within – and ultimately prosecute the criminals who once owned them. A tangible solution to a deeply rooted problem, the school itself is the campaign. The School for Justice is not only starting a conversation around child prostitution on an epic scale, without the use of traditional media spend – but is also fundamentally shifting opinion. The School for Justice is built to last. And the class of 2018 is already on its way. Not just changing the conversation, but changing lives.

Execution

The campaign aimed to get India’s hidden child prostitution out into the public and into the newspapers by combining two things: hard data on the statistics of child prostitution in India with the emotional, human stories of the girls. The school was brought to life in the digital and social space by communicating its key messages with very shareable content, highlighting the injustice around child prostitution in a clear and rational way, but also empowering the victims and turning them into heroes. The story was told on different levels and in different channels throughout the campaign, building the audience with each piece of content, always leading them to the website to actively participate, and ‘Support the School for Justice’, through donations, collaborations and sharing. Content included a press conference in Mumbai, a photographic exhibition of the class of 2017, a website, several campaign films, a PR and social media campaign.

The School for Justice has only just opened, so it’s too early to give concrete results. The campaign is on-going and will span many years. The School has universal appeal with interest from all corners of the world and the (social) media landscape. From the Guardian to Upworthy, from the man in the street to Malala Yousafzai’s foundation, response to the School for Justice is significant. The primary challenge was to get very taboo topics around child prostitution and the impact of gender imbalance and caste, openly discussed in Indian media and amongst the public. This topic is notoriously ignored by the press and public alike. However, first responses have been extremely favourable with an incredible response from the national press in India and international press and endorsements from the UK’s Law Society, the Geena Davis foundation and the world’s youngest ever Nobel Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai’s foundation . Public reaction across social media has been strong. For a topic that’s previously been left unspoken, India got vocal. Very vocal. The levels of engagement from the target audience are incredibly high. The School for Justice will be a real success when the first girls are public prosecutors and the first of the criminals who once owned them behind bars. But the first class of many has started and with this the School for Justice is already rebuilding lives and empowering the girls to be a new kind of role model as the next generation of leaders in their field.

The Situation

Lending a credible, authentic voice to the campaign was critical and came from the girls and their life experiences; PR was critical to convey the power of their stories and through the media we told their stories with the greatest impact. The School for Justice was first launched through the media and the campaign hinges on PR to continue to drive the message across India as well as global news outlets. The strategy is built on ongoing media relations to communicate each milestone achieved and to fuel the next conversation as the girls story continues to unfold.

The Strategy

Our task was to raise awareness around child prostitution. The strategy was to employ a controversial and taboo-breaking communication tool to get the topic talked about: School for Justice. The School for Justice has universal appeal, but the campaign perhaps surprisingly targets men aged between 18 and 45; because they’re on the demand side of the sex industry, and are still more ‘influential’ in (Indian) society. We activated traditional media to serve a broad demographic including stakeholders who could make a significant difference to the cause; and we used social media to reach a younger group, appealing to influencers such as Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat. The campaign developed tactics to change opinions from seeing the girls as complicit in the crime - to victims of exploitation. The PR strategy employed the media to push messages across India but also showed the solution to the problem lay in supporting the cause.

Links

Supporting Webpage