A group of passionate local advocacy organisations led by SPECTRUM, Centre for Independent Living CIC, came together to launch a new community-wide partnership campaign, ‘Love Don’t Hate’, to stamp out hate crime in Southampton in conjunction with National Hate Crime Awareness Week 2018.
They asked the team at Carswell Gould if we could help, so we stepped up to the plate and delivered an effective combination of PR, social media, design, and app and web development to raise awareness of hate crime in the city, promote the reporting process and, ultimately, encourage everyone in Southampton to adopt a zero tolerance on hate crime in Southampton.
Everyone in Southampton should feel confident and sufficiently empowered to recognise and report incidents of hate crime, yet we know from statistics and first-hand experience this is very often not the case. We cannot tackle crimes that are not reported, and so addressing under-reporting in the first instance is crucial to our broader aim of reducing these incidents and making Southampton a better and safer city, with zero tolerance of this behaviour.
Ian Loynes, Chief Executive of SPECTRUM
Recent statistics reveal that Southampton is the second worst city in the UK for hate crime. Almost 600 incidents of hate crime were reported in 2016/7 - a 30 percent increase on the previous year - but community organisations, including those already backing Love Don’t Hate, suggest the number of offences may even be much higher.
When we heard this, we knew we had to do something to help promote reporting. We did some research that framed how hard it was to report an incident of hate crime, and worked with the group to agree where our input would be most valued.
To make the reporting process easier, the community-wide partnership has created a network of 18 reporting centres across Southampton, where victims can access support. We also developed a new smartphone app, Southampton Love Don’t Hate, as part of the Love Don’t Hate campaign to promote online reporting.
The app, which is now available to download on Google Play and Apple for Android, allows its users to immediately report a hate crime to the nearest third party reporting centre.
Users can also request a call back from the nearest reporting centre via the app should they require it, and use the app to learn more about what a hate crime is and the types of hate crimes that can occur.
It is unacceptable that in a city like Southampton, people are being allowed to get away with cruel and malicious behaviour towards one another because of their differences. We are extremely proud to support Love Don’t Hate, and play a part in raising awareness of hate crime in Southampton and making it easier for both those personally affected by hate crime and those witnessing them as they occur to speak out with the development of this app.
Ed Gould, Creative Director, Carswell Gould
We also designed a bank of creative assets, including posters, social media headers, gifs and email signatures, for all of the partners and anyone else interested in supporting the campaign to use, as well as a news story announcing the campaign for every partner to share on their respective website.
We secured online, print and radio coverage with local press, including Southern Daily Echo, who we arranged a media partnership with during National Hate Crime Awareness Week. During the week, news of the campaign reached 316,000 radio listeners, almost one million readers across online and print outlets.
Our #SOLoveDontHate hashtag, which we set up specifically for the launch of the campaign, also reached 104,714 accounts and made 119,235 impressions.
Help make Southampton a fairer and safer place - contact us if you want to join the campaign.
Our work with Spectrum Centre is also award-winning as it won the CIPR PRide Gold Award for Best Community Relations Campaign.
