Designing for victim counseling Zurich: advertising success with a stale aftertaste

You read it all too often in the media. Violent crimes are committed with high regularity and in all areas. Whether it's drivers beating each other on public roads or secret threats in private, violence has many faces.

Despite a clear legal basis and comprehensive prevention measures, violent crimes remain at a high level. In recent years, there has even been a slight increase. This is not least due to the Corona pandemic, which has led to an increased incidence of domestic violence.

Victims have a right to help

Because victims of violent acts deserve special protection, the Swiss Victim Assistance Act speaks a clear language: every person who has been the victim of a violent act has the right to assistance. This assistance includes counseling, legal support and financial aid. In addition to the suffering experienced by every victim, there remains another problem that even the law cannot address: the high number of unreported cases of victims who do not dare to report an act of violence or seek help. "Depending on the act of violence and the study, we have to assume that up to 80 percent of crimes are not reported to the police and that a similar number of victims do not seek help," explains Fedor Bottler, who heads the Zurich victim counseling center and is a co-initiator of the campaign.

Chat counseling for youth and other victims of violence

The number of victims who do not seek help is particularly high among young people. "An analysis of the various means of communication has shown that addressing them in a way that is appropriate for young people lowers the inhibition threshold for making contact," explains Thomas Krebs, owner of Gestalten. "After all, for this target group in particular, it is too big a step to come to the premises of the Zurich victim counseling center to open up to an unknown counselor with their concerns. For this reason, digital channels were established for young people that ensure simple and anonymous, i.e. low-threshold access."

A tightrope walk for creatives

In order to publicize the new chat service and motivate those affected to seek help, Gestalten was commissioned to develop a communication concept. Especially the creation was confronted with a big challenge. Although the aim was to develop an attention-grabbing, fast, emotional, aesthetic and activating campaign, special attention had to be paid to the victims' sensitivities. "The campaign should in no way be lurid or put pressure on the audience," explains Krebs. That's why different directions were also pursued during development, which were ultimately evaluated together with specialists from the Zurich victim counseling center.

In the development process, Gestalten has approached the subject with different lines.

Bringing the chat to life

As a basis for the creative concept, the agency from Zurich Binz chose the symbolism and architecture of a live chat and populated it with exemplary content. In this way, it was possible to subtly reflect the suffering of the victims and at the same time show how empathetic the immediate help provided by victim counseling can be. In order to create the dialogues for the individual subjects, the counselors of Opferberatung Zürich worked intensively with the creative team of Gestalten. A color combination with a high radiance unifies all advertising material applications.

Immediate response

Measured by the traditional standards of a direct response campaign, Gestalten considers the victim counseling campaign a great success. During a period starting in May 2021, the number of chat consultations has more than doubled compared to the previous year. At the same time, the number of clicks on the website has increased tenfold.

Despite the good results, there is still a stale aftertaste: the high response to the chat consultation is not only proof of the prevalence of the problem of violence, but also expresses to the same extent the high inhibition thresholds and the still widespread shame among those affected.