Vodafone Ireland Hides Signs of Domestic Abuse in Plain Sight

As part of Vodafone Ireland Foundation’s campaign, in partnership with Women’s Aid, creative agency JWT Folk created a series of seemingly normal print adverts to highlight the signs of domestic abuse that can be hidden in plain sight in our society.

In order to alert the general public to the worrying statistic that one in five women in Ireland are victims of domestic abuse, JWT Folk strategically placed a series of adverts with hidden coercive control messages in the Sunday Independent and The Sunday Times newspapers. The adverts put the readers in the shoes of a domestic abuse victim so they could feel the impact that coercive control abusers inflict day to day.

Abi Moran, CEO JWT Folk, explains the rationale behind the ads: “We wanted to do something that would place a strong spotlight on the number of women that experience domestic abuse every day in Ireland. Most of us are largely unaware of the scale of abuse in Ireland as it often goes unnoticed. Signs of coercive control could be right in front of our eyes and we might not realise it. We highlighted this through a series of print ads in The Sunday Times and Sunday Independent that on the surface, seemed totally normal but once the reader looked closer, all was not what it seemed.”

The print adverts ran in both national newspapers on Sunday, 8th March, coinciding with International Women’s Day 2020.