Women’s Aid is a small charity organisation without access to large budgets for celebrity endorsements, glossy production values and, most importantly, media. Innovation meant two things for the task at hand; it created an engaging piece of work that involved audiences as never before whilst at the same time ensuring we could work, with limited expenditure, with top-flight collaborators from the worlds of media and production who were keen to help develop this new platform.

The technology felt a perfect fit with the issue of domestic abuse in the UK – a problem many don’t acknowledge. The innovation was integral to the idea; it did not appear ‘gimmicky’ in any sense. In many ways it is the natural technological extension of the ‘what would you do’ concept used frequently by work in the charity sector.

As the campaign launched we became aware of two other projects using 3D technology in a similar fashion. However, neither used mass-market polarised 3D technology, instead employing dated anaglyph 3D in one instance and bespoke glasses in the other.

The technology itself is not overly complex. It involves shooting two scenarios and projecting these together via a standard 3D digital projector. As with commercial 3D movies, one image is projected in horizontal lines, the other in vertical lines. With standard glasses the eyes pull these together and a sense of depth is perceived. With ‘Blind Eye’ the scenarios were shot in such a way that, by switching between watching through left and right eyes, the viewer can alternate between two scenarios.

The technology has already been rolled out to UK screens with ‘Blind Eye’ and we're currently looking at further platforms for the film (such as 3D TV) as well as other clients who could benefit from this unique and innovative approach to 3D advertising.

The goal was to use innovation in order to raise awareness about domestic abuse in the UK without large-scale media and production budgets.

Given that it makes use of existing technological set-ups in 3D cinemas across the world, this innovation is something that many clients/organisations could use. The innovation has shown that a format that was unattractive to advertisers and defined solely by immersive, often cost prohibitive experiences, could be re-purposed and used to deliver powerful, involving and cost effective work.

We generated £5m worth of free cinema media thanks to a collaboration with the UK’s best known cinema advertising contractor who were keen to work on the project due to its pioneering use of 3D. Without spending a penny on media, this campaign was seen at full impact by half a million people. From zero cost this campaign generated a PR value of £209,000 - a level beyond the realms of most brands, never mind a small charity. Although a UK campaign, in just six small weeks, coverage went far beyond the borders of the UK, gaining an incredible reach of 242.8million.