This is a video of men in an anti-sexual harassment campaign in Egypt. The point made by the guy on top in the screen caps, shares my long standing sentiment on cat calling. That aside, there are few points to share.
Lately I’ve noticed quite a number of sexual harassment incidents in Egypt. I am not surprised if sexual harassment was already a significant issue in Egypt preceding this. I just wonder if there’s been a significant rise of late, or if this all is the result of a sufficiently well strategized campaign to bring it up.
I Follow on Twitter a number of Middle Eastern commentators and in the past week, those who write in English have spoken about this issue three times. I suspect those who have been pushing this campaign via Arabic language is far greater, since their target audience speaks that more.
I suspect though that this also relates to a number of incidences where female protestors were assaulted during demonstrations, as well as after when some were detained. Click here to read about the incident involving the picture below. How very unpleasant and wrong indeed.
Secondly, in the creative aspect, in terms of video format, while I’m not sure how appealing this one is to the target audience, but I am a little bored of it. It does copy the cliche method of certain very well received campaigns, but I wish we saw a better exploration of ideas and execution.
Although admittedly of course, this format does allow a campaign to get out a lot of text/words and cover various angles. It’s not multidimensional in terms of perspective, but at least reasoning within the campaign itself.
To add into the mix, imagine if there was a realistic mock scene of someone getting sexually harassed. And then the screen freezes, then a caption of text goes on top of it, then the screen unfreezes, and the harasser (actor) or victim (actor) turns around and say the same thing as what the caption did.
Keep in mind that if certain things are made to provoke thought and action, nudge paradigms and mindsets, the more captivating and moving it is, the more effective it could be. Don’t mistaken this for having to do something patronizing or condascending though, at say the expense of someone else.
Anyway, give it a thought.