On July 25th, 1994, RAINN took the first call on the National Sexual Assault Hotline. Much has changed over the past 30 years as we’ve made meaningful impacts on sexual violence prevention and the justice system. However, as a non-profit with limited resources and an immense mission, we needed an opportunity to re-introduce RAINN and recommit to building awareness and making progress.
It is clear that RAINN and the National Sexual Assault Hotline must expand our reach to new audiences—and that, as a culture, we still have a lot to learn and much to do.
“Together, we will create a world free from sexual violence.”
This is the campaign message and rally call. RAINN has led the way for 30 years, but to do what is needed moving forward, we must support survivors, fight for justice, and create a new community of hope and strength—together.
We can look back at the impact of 30 years on 5 million survivors and their loved ones while recognizing the work left to do. We must re-introduce the idea that RAINN is here as a safe place to talk and build awareness with younger audiences for RAINN and our National Sexual Assault Hotline.
This effort will break through in a new, creative way, providing hope to survivors of sexual violence and leaving space for everyone to lean in and learn more.
Drawing on RAINN’s history and powerful data, our team launched an exploration of new ways to increase awareness of RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline while emphasizing the core of our organization’s mission: hope.
Our efforts revealed a key statistic about the survivors who most urgently need support from RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline: 80% of sexual violence happens before the age of 18—and college-aged adults are at disproportionate risk.
We also sought to understand the community’s awareness of RAINN and whether people connected the totality of RAINN’s impact to the National Sexual Assault Hotline at the core of our services. We found that RAINN does have awareness and is a recognized thought leader in anti-sexual violence spaces, and the National Sexual Assault Hotline is well known; however, there was not a strong connection to our brand, and the audiences visiting RAINN’s website and social media did not fully comprehend the relationship between RAINN and its online support services or our full impact.
With this information in mind, we developed a strategy to pull together our resources and relaunch RAINN to a new generation by spotlighting the hotline’s 30 years of impact and publicly recommitting to building the next 30+ years of solutions together.
We set out to evolve the way we tell stories and engage audiences. This strategic approach also included the creation of a retro 90’s-themed creative video that stepped back from the scare tactics and “traditional” PSA tones of the past and leaned into beautiful visuals, driving sound design, and a narrative of hope and urgency that would capture attention, break through screens, and build awareness.
Working with an illustrator, we embraced an attention-grabbing mixed-media approach that would attract new audiences reinforce RAINN’s connecting with existing audiences.
This strategy, paired with an evolution in our brand’s social media engagement, shares invaluable education, amplifies real survivor stories, and utilizes effective marketing to reach and engage audiences. We have seen great progress and momentum for our vision.
On a shoestring budget, and limited internal resources and time, our team set ambitious objectives to measure success. Given what we knew, our resources, and previous successes, our benchmarks were established.
Our campaign objectives were:
The Results: Surpassing our year-long objectives in under six months:
These metrics outpaced our established objectives significantly.
By double and triple digits, we exceeded the stated objectives and continue to see successes.
With this reach, we can support more survivors of sexual violence, create momentum in our fight for justice, and embolden communities to reject fear and shame, instead transforming the narrative to one of hope and help.
