How we got a photographer’s victim blaming campaign seen by millions of people in just one week!
THE BRIEF
Award-winning photographer Jayne Jackson came to us to raise awareness of her people free art protest in Bournemouth town centre. The protest was to encourage people to donate their shoes to metaphorically march in protest and walk #intheirshoes to represent people who have been sexually assaulted. This was sparked by the harrowing Sarah Everard case, and by the millions of people across the UK who don’t feel safe to walk alone at night. Jayne’s previous work and project ‘Asking For It’ focuses on victim blaming in domestic and sexual abuse cases, and she wants this to change. With the support of local MPs, sexual abuse victims, and local sexual abuse charities as well as using social media and our help with PR, Jayne displayed the hundreds of shoes in an art piece showcasing the hundreds of people willing to take a stand in the local area.
THE CHALLENGE
Our challenge was getting Jayne on BBC South Today and in regional news in a short space of time. We also had to be careful what we said to press as we didn’t want to encourage a crowd of people gathering at the location of the shoes during the pandemic.
THE SOLUTION
The SBPR team acted quickly and efficiently by compiling individual and tailored pitches which we sent out to regional media with three days to spare before the protest. We used our contacts in the South Today newsroom and tracked down the relevant producer and organised various Zoom interviews with Jayne and the protest supporters to be aired the next day. We made sure to keep the location quiet until the day of the protest to prevent mass gatherings.
THE OUTCOME
In the space of three days, we secured Jayne online and print coverage in the Bournemouth Daily Echo, the most read regional news outlet, reaching over 150,000 local people. We also secured Jayne multiple interview slots on BBC South Today on their news programmes throughout the day including the early morning news, breakfast show, lunchtime bulletin, early evening news and late-night news at 10pm.
Jayne’s art protest was seen by a total of over 3 million people and was even covered in a German newspaper!
