Women’s Aid is this week’s winner

Good PR

Face facts

A billboard that was installed in Canary Wharf ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March really grabbed the attention of passersby; so it’s earned its place in this column today.

The ad featured a simple design, depicting a woman with a bruised face and the words “LOOK AT ME”. The charity Women’s Aid was behind this billboard, which you may think – at first – was an obvious approach to take.

However, the clever part in all of this was that facial recognition technology was used to determine when people walking by were paying attention to the advert. A viewer count at the bottom of the billboard was updated according to the number of people who’d looked at it, which also gradually altered the image. The more glances the display attracted from people walking past, the more the woman’s face visibly healed. That’s a great big tick for wow factor, then.

Women’s Aid wanted to raise awareness of how the charity saved the lives of those suffering from domestic violence using the engagement-activated screen. The great thing about this stunt is that it was a world-first, as never before has the attention of people looking at a digital screen triggered immediate changes to the display in real time.

The display was also shown in Westfield Shopping Centre and the Birmingham Bullring and the story picked up coverage with the likes of Huffington Post, Wired, The Independent, Mashable and many other publications on an international scale. Daring people to pay attention to domestic violence in this way was a bold and clever move and this is sure to be a campaign people remember.

Shannon Haigh, 10 Yetis, @ShazzaYeti on Twitter

Seen any good or bad PR recently, you know what to do, @10Yetis on Twitter or andy@10yetis.co.uk on email.