FOI - ‘Maaate’ advertising campaign [Nov 2023]

You requested: 

1. How much money has the London Mayoralty spent on its ‘Maaate’ advertising campaign regarding sexual harassment. This should include, but is not limited to, spending on staff, advertising agencies, advertising space - and where the Mayoralty has used its own advertising space for free, the cost in foregone advertising revenue.
2. Which external advertising agencies were paid for work on the ‘Maaate’ advertising campaign?
3. Within the figure for question 1, how much is being paid to the agencies referred to in question 2 for work on the ‘Maaate’ advertising campaign.
4. How the Mayoralty will measure and assess the impact and effectiveness of its campaign.

Our response to your request is as follows:

1. The total cost of 'Maaate' campaign is £219,143.34. This includes a behavioural study and underpinning research, the production of physical and digital posters, the creation and adaptation of social media assets, the development of an interactive, educational video, and all paid advertising spend to date. By comparison, the Home Office's equivalent campaign cost a projected £8 million.

   The ‘Maaate’ campaign is only one of the many ways the Mayor of London is tackling violence against women and girls. Separate to this campaign, the Mayor has overseen a record investment of over £117million since 2016, including £17.7million for support services. His strategy places an emphasis on partnership working, prevention, and education across a wide range of services, as well as helping to make venues, transport and public spaces in the capital safer for women at night.

Last year, the Mayor launched the ‘Have a Word’ campaign, which plays a small part in the overall strategy by recognising that violence against women and girls often starts with words before it leads to violence and abuse. Research showed that 85 per cent of men who saw the campaign said they wanted to intervene when their peers’ language went too far but more than half of men interviewed also said they didn’t know how. ‘Maaate’ is the second phase of the ‘Have a Word’ campaign, speaking to young men and giving them a safe method of intervening. 61 per cent of men aged 18 – 34 who saw the ‘Maaate’ campaign said that they now felt more confident in calling out misogyny.

The TfL advertising space used by the GLA is not commercial space and therefore, TfL did not forego advertising revenue as a result of the campaign.

2. Ogilvy has been the agency partner for both phases.

The GLA worked with the advertising agency on a partnership basis. £80,000 was paid to the advertising agency by the GLA for development and production of the campaign. An additional £80,000 worth of agency time and spend was invested by Ogilvy pro bono as part of the partnership arrangement.

The GLA's partnership with Ogilvy also helped unlock further additional value-in-kind from wider partners, completely free of charge, worth over £1.5 million, which includes free media space, content creation, and the voices of people with large reach into our target audiences.

3. All GLA marketing campaigns are monitored and evaluated through comprehensive performance tracking and reporting measures which include, but are not limited to:
4. attitudinal research with Londoners, including polling to measure shifts in attitudes, perceptions, claimed behaviour, and intent

• engagement with marketing materials, such as content reach, video views, interactive video engagements, engagement with educational materials, dwell time on resources amongst others
• online conversation and sentiment, using social listening tools
• depth interviews with practitioners
• additional metrics (where possible) contributed by campaign partners - such as reach and frequency of broadcast materials, engagement with partner-led content.

We are also in frequent contact with sector experts, women’s groups and industry experts to assess the impact on their work, and using their input to both optimise our activity and inform future campaigns.