The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2021
2breakthesilence put 720 assaulted women on RedeTV — one per daily report in Brazil
RedeTV's schedule was interrupted every two minutes by a real woman's portrait — 720 in all, one per daily assault — then viewers were urged to call Dial 180.
Fala Mulher Association (Associação Fala Mulher) · RedeTV!
What it had to solve
Brazil's statistics said a woman is assaulted every two minutes — 720 a day — and during the pandemic incidents rose while calls to the women's helpline fell drastically. Victims were not reporting, so Fala Mulher and RedeTV! set out to reach them inside the programming they already watched.
How it works
Every two minutes a woman is assaulted in Brazil — 720 a day. During the pandemic the number of incidents rose, yet reports to the Center for Women's Services Helpline fell drastically: victims were staying silent exactly when violence was growing.
The Fala Mulher Association and RedeTV! decided to reach those victims, and Brazilian agency We turned the statistic into a broadcast event. Instead of an ad that describes the number, they made the number run the channel itself.
Every two minutes, RedeTV!'s transmission was interrupted with the image of a woman being assaulted. The women were real — different ages, races, classes, transgender and disabled — and their scenes were drawn from actual reports gathered by Fala Mulher: 720 portraits across the day, one per daily assault. Cellist Noélle Bonacin composed the score after watching the muted film, and the captured frames became a two-minute film that aired in the schedule, ending with a call to report cases via Dial 180.
The project took roughly two years of production and became the first D&AD Yellow Pencil for Original Composition in the Sound Design & Use of Music category, alongside an LIA Grand Prix for Original Music and a Clio Silver; D&AD's awards archive keeps the work under Sound Design & Use of Music.
Why it lands
- 720 real women playing victims turned an abstract daily count into faces a viewer met all day long.
- Interrupting the schedule made the medium obey the statistic's two-minute clock instead of talking about it.
- Scenes grounded in real victim accounts and cast with real women kept the film from turning suffering into spectacle.
- The Dial 180 call closed every loop, converting emotion into the one action that breaks the silence.
What it did
The statistic stopped being a number and became something viewers could not look away from; the project took the first-ever D&AD Yellow Pencil for Original Composition in Sound Design & Use of Music, an LIA Grand Prix for Original Music and a Clio Silver, and every broadcast routed victims toward the reporting line.
What you can take
A statistic people ignore becomes unmissable when the medium follows its clock: let the number set the rhythm — one assault every two minutes — and the audience feels the scale in real time.
Since then
RedeTV! made its whole physical and programming structure available to the project, and the broadcast intervention was cut into a standalone two-minute film that traveled the award circuit — the first D&AD Yellow Pencil for Original Composition (Sound Design & Use of Music, 2022), a London International Awards Grand Prix for Original Music (2021) and a Clio Silver (2022). The work remains in D&AD's archive as a reference for turning civic statistics into media itself.
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