Hippie trident. Red ribbon. Yellow vest. Many movements and campaigns that have captured popular imagination have used some form of symbol to give them the strength of a brand.
The campaign’s symbol is the display of a visible red mark on the face—easy to reproduce at no cost, easy to display, and just as easy to erase. Most men will not be far away from a lipstick, and their use of it will add more meaning to the symbol (and possibly lead to great interactions with women partners, friends, or colleagues).
The use of red is indeed very effective, as soccer fans will directly identify it as a reference to the red card sanctioning players for their behavior.
A good symbol is definitely a great asset for a campaign, under three additional conditions:
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1. Consistency
It takes a huge amount of visibility and a lot of time before a symbol becomes strong enough to stand on its own. This is when the symbol becomes part of the national culture, and when its potential is reaped. In this campaign, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on November 25, provides an annual landmark that allows for regular visibility.
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2. Messengers
Before a symbol gains authority, it needs powerful supporters. Since its inception in 2018, the campaign has seen all major football clubs and their players join the campaign.
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.3. Diffusion
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However brilliant they might be, campaign managers can never be as good as thousands of individuals carrying the visibility of a symbol forward. However, few campaigns have put in place a real strategy by which they encourage this shared ownership. In the case of this Italian campaign, one of the main objectives is fundraising for a development organization, “We Word”. This entails that all communications around the red mark are associated with the organisation. This is hardly compatible with a larger ownership, which is the mark of movements. This factor may reduce the impact of this symbol, and therefore the social impact of this campaign.
Pride in Singapore has taken on a simple yet powerful symbol. Every year, participants gather to create a pink dot and a simple message, such as “equality” or, in the example below, “majulah” or onward in Malay. As the organizers explain, “pink is the colour of our (identity cards). It is also the colour when you mix red and white – the colours of our national flag. Pink Dot stands for an open, inclusive society within our Red Dot, where sexual orientation represents a feature, not a barrier.”
Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the country’s largest LGBTIQ rights campaign group, has taken on this simple symbol as its organizational logo to signify its simple call: equality for LGBTIQ people. Since then, it has become one of the most recognizable symbols in the LGBTIQ movement. In 2013, HRC turned its yellow-and-blue logo red for the campaign for marriage equality, which became viral and has given birth to creative iterations. Its power lies in its simplicity: red and equal mean equality in the right to love.
The red handprint has become the symbol of the movement to seek justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). While indigenous women and girls are disproportionately subjected to violence, this problem is largely ignored. Indigenous women and girls continue to be silenced, while the media and the government are not giving this problem the attention it needs, hence the red handprint. This very striking symbol aims to capture the attention of the public and decision-makers and spur them into action.
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