In the time I spent working as a copywriter for an advertising company, probably the most important thing I learnt was that every piece of work I produced had to speak for itself, and the clarity of the message was paramount. If I were to work on a campaign, it was vital that the different elements worked together to portray the same message.

So I am left confused at the recent discordant message being transmitted on issues of rape and female abuse. At the same time as a swishy ad campaign attempts to inject levity into an issue which is surely anything but frivolous, judges have called for a lightening of sentences for convicted rapists which would equate to almost 15%. The justification for this is that prison regimes are now harder than previously.

We must have all read the statistics which have been repeated across the various papers: only 1 in 20 reported rapes ends in a conviction; it is believed that this is an even smaller figure when compared with how many cases are actually reported. And these figures are brought to life by the stories which we are daily bombarded with – Mary Ann Leneghan’s brutal rape and murder, the teenager in Manchester who raped four girls aged between 7 and 12., the constant attacks by men on vulnerable women.

Now I am aware I am starting to sound tabloidy in my ranting, and that is not my intention. But until there is a clearer policy on rape I just don’t see that anything will change. So the horrendous results which Amnesty’s report last year yielded are not surprising when the people who uphold the law feel that cutting sentences back is acceptable. As a reminder, these are the findings: ‘one third of those surveyed believe that women who flirt are partly at fault if someone rapes them. A third see women as being “partially or wholly” responsible for being raped if they are intoxicated. Finally, more than a quarter of those interviewed think women invite rape to some extent if they wear seductive clothing.’

It has been widely reported in shocked tones that the ad campaign being run at the moment cost the government £400 000. This is a paltry budget, and it should be noted how it compares to other big news stories which featured advertising spends: Anderson’s rebrand to Accenture which cost £175 million in 2001; around £18 million spent by both the Tories and Labour in their bid to win the last election. Just this month, Teletext launched a £6 million advertising campaign to modernise itself. Jamie Oliver is thought to earn over £1 million per year for fronting Sainsbury’s. And you can be sure that all of the corporate campaigns which spend this much money have people both from the agency and the corporation who ensure that a company’s brand or proposition is communicated internally so that everything the company does is kept ‘on message’.

I think it is time that everyone involved in campaigning and legislating against rape gets together and makes sure they know what their message is. Because as a woman I could lay to one side my concern about the message of the campaign itself – that the responsibility in sex lies entirely with the man – if I felt that the result would be a reduction in rape. Instead it feels like a highly visible thing for the government to do, to be seen to be doing the right thing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Topical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.