Campaign: Strength to Change – program against domestic violence

In 2009, the NHS launched the ‘Strength to Change’ campaign to raise awareness of domestic violence in Hull, in the UK, and to encourage perpetrators to get help to change their behaviour. TNS Social, which specialises in social and public sector research, undertook some pre-testing and evaluation research for the campaign to ensure that the advertising strategy was on track and made recommendations to increase the impact of ads.

With the help of TNS Social the campaign reached 60% of men in Hull aged between 18 and 50, well ahead of benchmark levels for comparative UK government campaigns. The vast majority of the men exposed to the campaign said it was believable and one in three men said that it had changed the way they thought about domestic violence, including those who admitted to being violent at home (the primary target group).