CHALLENGE

In 1989, 14 female students were massacred at the University of Montreal. In response the White Ribbon Campaign was launched to work with men in ending violence against women. As one of the first ribbon campaigns they stood out. 20 years later, White Ribbon was lost in a sea of other ribbon campaigns. Few men had heard of them. Those who had weren’t listening.

SOLUTION

Talk to men in a way that they could relate to by rebranding and repositioning the White Ribbon Campaign around a new core mission: working with men to rewrite the outdated code of masculinity that leads to violence against women.

We wanted our posters to seem like they came from a reactionary underground men’s group. To enhance the grassroots effect we created a masculine and aggressive hand-cut typeface “Agro Sans” that looked as though it could have come from a low-tech basement printing press.

Within a day posters were torn down and vandalized.  

A temporary landing page teased the relaunch of White Ribbon.

We replaced the original posters with our bold White Ribbon branding and invited men to help us rewrite the man code.

The redesigned White Ribbon website became a hub for discussions about what it means to be a man and submissions to the new man code.

This limited edition, hand illustrated poster was created to rally the organization around its new core mission.