We needed to make British society aware that honour-based violence is an issue that cannot be ignored.

The insight was that these abused women are trapped by abuse: in their homes; in their communities; even in their own minds. To end it, we must make it clear – to the victims and to British society - that they can and must be set free.

This insight shaped the idea to use a magazine cover wrap to highlight the case of 17 year old Shafilea Ahmed, who was suffocated by her parents with a plastic bag for refusing an arranged marriage.

In January this year, an Annual National Day of Remembrance for the British victims of honour killings was officially declared at The Houses of Parliament.

Cross-governmental support has been received to support the day of memory. All agencies’ departments have agreed to hold targeted conferences to further educate their departments and deliver tailored communications on the day of memory.

The campaign achieved 28,517,589 media impressions, 220,771,948 views and public responses of support from Home Secretary Theresa May and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

All of which drove a 94% increase in traffic to the website.

The use of social allowed us to reach an audience who the message would really resonate with and who are active users of social and likely to share. This sparked a global conversation which was then reinforced by the public endorsement of Government to show this is a serious matter which extends beyond politics or journalistic reporting.

By generating further public awareness it in turn created public pressure on key influencers and authority to act and create change as communicated to them in the DM.

The wrap was distributed at a closed event for key influencers at the House of Commons. Most were aware of honour-based violence and Karma Nirvana. Opening the plastic wrapper ‘suffocating’ the victim symbolized their power to release women from abuse, and provided the report outlining measures required to do it.

Releasing the image and film across Cosmopolitan’s social media channels created relevancy for women of a similar demographic to the victims. The cover showed them it was an issue worth engaging with, emphasizing the contrast between their Western freedoms and the horrific abuse of their peers for seeking those freedoms.