The Handmaid’s Tale was one of the most talked about shows of 2017. It’s set in the totalitarian society of Gilead – formerly the United States. Here, women’s rights have been stripped away in barbaric, shocking fashion.

They’re forced to serve elite men and their barren wives by bearing their children as handmaids.

For the return of Channel 4’s Emmy and BAFTA-award winning drama, our challenge was to build on the buzz and momentum of series one and get people tuning in once more in their droves.

We needed to generate the levels of anticipation that would ultimately bring 1.5 million viewers to the first episode.

To forcibly attract attention for the show, we decided to create temporary outrage with messaging that assumed the voice of Gilead. We would give the public a taste of this twisted fundamentalist state with our provocative campaign, with the oppression of women as its subject matter.

The campaign took a heavy dose of bravery from Channel 4. We developed a series of frightening messages from Gilead officials, enforcing their laws in modern day Britain. Our censorship messages were unmissable, deliberately planned for contextual relevance to supercharge their brutal impact.

A Metro cover-wrap read ‘Women are not allowed to read this newspaper’ and was supported with full-page ads in the Evening Standard and female targeted national press supplements.

At key commuter train stations across the country, we ran high impact DOOH placements telling those on the way to and from work ‘The city is no place for a woman. A woman’s place is at home’ and ‘The only job for a woman is to reproduce’.

And we partnered with Amazon to outrage Kindle readers via a blunt message on the wake screen, stating ‘Women are not allowed to read’.

Once we’d achieved our temporary outrage goal, we revealed the true nature of the campaign with awareness messages which appeared online, in Cinema and on OOH.