After a backlog of more than 11,000 untested rape kits was found in a Detroit Police Department storage unit, women across Michigan called for justice. The group Michigan Women Forward (then known as Michigan Women’s Foundation) stepped up, joining forces with Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to find funding for the testing, investigation, and prosecution of these forgotten rape cases.
In 2015, they came to Brogan & Partners with the mission: Create a campaign to make people aware of these forgotten victims of sexual assault, and inspire them to donate to the cause. We began by giving the initiative a name: Enough SAID (Enough Sexual Assault in Detroit). The name was inspired by what many women felt when they learned of this injustice: The time for talking is over—let’s do something now.
Creative inspiration for the campaign pieces came from the design of the rape kits themselves. Discovering that each kit was packaged in a plain white box labeled with a bar code, our creative team used that visual to show how each anonymous code represented a real woman with a harrowing story, a story that had gone ignored.
This brochure, which was supported by a creative social media campaign, won Best of Show at the 2015 D Show (the Detroit ad community’s annual awards show). And more importantly, it led to millions of dollars in donations and public funding, as well as the discovery of 765 rape suspects. It also sent a message to sexual assault victims across Michigan: You will not be forgotten.
To see more of our best work, visit our original post in this series: Celebrating 40 years of creative advertising.
