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This summer, the Surrey Women’s Centre launched a 24-hour mobile response service for women at risk of physical and/or sexual violence: SMART, the Surrey Mobile Assault Response Team.

Tugboat aimed to integrate the SMART program with Surrey Women’s Centre’s existing ecosystem of services, and help those who experience abuse.

The strategy included developing outreach materials about SMART: The program’s logo and accompanying business cards, brochure and rack card, as well as the SMART website, newspaper ads and a special object for at-risk women to carry with them, which discreetly displays the SMART help line number.

Newspaper ads are designed to reach many groups of people. Most notably, the women and girls who experience abuse, but also the people who care about them – neighbours, family, teachers, friends. Those who want to help, but aren’t sure how.

Tugboat created 12 small, square ads to run in local publications. Each has a short, compelling message printed in magenta on a black background, so that the ads are easy to pick out on a page of print and identifiable as a series. The ads were written to speak to the audiences the SMART program is designed for. To tie the series together, each ad incorporates the SMART acronym. E.g. Abusive spouse? It’s SMART to talk to someone.

SMART brochures and business cards key to the esthetic created for the ads: magenta on black, using the same messages.

The pièce de résistance for this project was the purse object. It was developed for women to carry with them at all times, to give them access to the SMART help phone number whenever they need it. We’d love to tell you what it is, but that would ruin the secret.

Its unassuming appearance would help it remain undetected were an abuser to rifle through the owner’s belongings.