‘Where’s the Line?’ campaign sees success in combatting domestic violence

Columbus CEO – March 2015

Karen Days, president of the Center for Family Safety and Healing

It didn’t take long for the Center for Family Safety and Healing’s “Where’s the Line?” campaign to make an impact.

It didn’t take long for the Center for Family Safety and Healing’s “Where’s the Line?” campaign to make an impact. “Two calls the day of the launch—for me, that’s a homerun,” says Karen Days, center president. In the first few weeks since the Jan. 8 launch, the pace remained steady, with more than two calls a day to 844-234-LINE during noon-8 p.m. weekday hours, in addition to texts to 87028.

Days credits the 2011 merger of the Columbus Coalition Against Family Violence with the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital for giving the new center she now heads the resources and impetus for the $400,000 campaign. Conversation about doing a large campaign started in early days of the merged center, but it was subsequent survey and focus group work by Marty Saperstein of Saperstein Associates that began to shape the work, Days says.

“Every single person in the focus group could recount having seen something but didn’t know what to do,” Days recalls.

The center hired Ologie to do the creative work for the ad campaign and works with Irvin Public Relations to help promote the initiative, which the center believes is unprecedented in targeting bystanders to impact family violence.

Another key to the work is the customizable iCarol software the center uses to track and make sense of the campaign’s metrics—the number and type of calls, texts and also instant messages sent to its website, familysafetyandhealing.org. All outreach to the center is anonymous and confidential, but data around the contacts is what will determine the success of the effort, Days says.

The TV and print ad campaign is slated to run through February but could go longer, since many media outlets have offered deals that can extend the media buys negotiated by Jamie McGann of McGann Media Group, Days says. Even Donatos has helped by providing ad space on pizza box tops for two weeks, which by itself reached over 60,000 people, Days says.

For Days, the way to eliminate family violence is simple: “We need everyone in the community to say this is not OK.”