Written Case – Canadian Women’s Foundation, “Signal Responders”

Timing: 25th November 2021 to 31st January 2022

Challenges and Goals

Signal For Help, created at the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020, was successful at providing victims of domestic abuse with a tool that they could use to let people know they needed help, without leaving any digital trace. However, a big challenge remained: many people who witnessed victims of abuse seeking help did not know how to respond. 

A national poll conducted by the Canadian Women’s Foundation in 2021 found that there were very low levels of confidence in knowing what to say and do to support someone experiencing abuse. The survey found about two thirds (64%) of people in Canada know a woman who has experienced physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, but that only one in six were very confident that they would know how to support someone experiencing emotional or sexual abuse, and only one in five would know how to support someone experiencing physical abuse. 

We were tasked with finding a way to change this statistic by increasing awareness not only for the Signal For Help hand signal, but for resources that would help turn bystanders into effective and safe responders. Our goal was to empower Canadians with the information and knowledge they needed in order to discreetly respond to, and help, a victim of abuse.

Insights and Strategy

If the Signal For Help was simple, visual and immediate, we needed the info to be as well. Text was our answer. We created a number that Canadians could text, where they would receive an action guide with the best ways to respond to the Signal For Help. This time, instead of speaking to the victims of gender-based violence, we would speak to the bystanders.

Our inspiration for the number came from the Signal For Help itself – 540-540, the numerical representation of each part of the hand gesture. Anyone in Canada could text the word SIGNAL to this number and receive a free action guide with the information they would need to know how to respond to a victim. 

Execution

We timed the launch of the campaign with the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence, dropping a PSA on November 25th, 2021. In the video, bystanders pledge their intention to become better responders to the Signal For Help, while video projections symbolize the domestic violence they may have been a witness to. The spot then visually unveils the hand signal – palm facing the camera with the 5 fingers, thumb tucked in with only 4 fingers out, and finally palm closed with 0 fingers out, literally describing the 5-4-0-5-4-0 number to text to learn how to safely respond. 

The spot was launched on digital and social, with donated OOH following. The OOH focused on the number that people could text to obtain the action guide, encouraging anyone who witnesses violence to text 540-540 to receive an action guide on how to respond.  

Results and Impact

As of May 19th, 2022, 500 text messages were sent to the 540-540 number, successfully spreading awareness of the toolkit to people who had witnessed abuse. Following the launch of the Responders campaign, the Canadian Women’s Foundation conducted an omnibus survey to determine whether awareness of the Signal For Help had increased compared to when the original campaign was launched in 2020. According to the survey, as of February 2022, 9% of respondents reported seeing the Signal For Help used or using it directly, up from 6%, and 40% of Canadians reported having seen ads or information about the signal, up from 39%. 

Meanwhile, the Signal For Help continues to be used and responded to around the world, with four recent cases being publicized in the news: an abducted teenager in Kentucky and two women in Spain in November 2021, and a kidnapped woman in Tennessee in April 2022, who were all helped by people who knew how to respond to this sign of crisis, now referred to in the media as the “TikTok Signal For Help” due to its widespread recognition on the social media platform. These real life impacts are strong examples of why it is important not only for victims to know the signal, but for responders to know what to do when they see it.