"Dress for Respect" was a 2018 advertising campaign for Schweppes in Brazil, created by the agency Ogilvy Brasil. Three women went out to nightclubs wearing a dress lined with touch and pressure sensors, and every time someone touched them the data appeared live on a screen watched by the team. Between them, the women were touched without their consent more than 40 times in an hour. The resulting film, released on YouTube on 9 May 2018, was then shown to men who had said groping in clubs was not a big problem.
Here is how the experiment worked, what Brazilian survey data says about harassment in public, what a sensor dress can and cannot prove, and what bystanders can do.
How the sensor dress worked
The dress was developed with Nagib Nassif, a technology specialist based in São Paulo. Sensors were sewn into the lining at several points on the body, and each one registered contact and pressure. The readings were sent wirelessly to a visual display, which showed where and how hard the wearer had been touched. That let the team see each incident as it happened while hidden cameras filmed the women's night out.
Three volunteers, named in the film as Juliana, Tatiana and Luisa, wore the dress to clubs. The film shows men they did not know touching them repeatedly, and not stopping even when the women made it clear they were not interested.
The campaign team said the idea grew out of preliminary interviews in which men told them that harassment was not a major issue for women who go to clubs. The dress was designed to answer that claim with data rather than argument.
What the campaign found
The headline figure from the film is that the three women were touched without consent more than 40 times in roughly an hour. Reports at the time do not make clear whether that was a combined total or an average per woman, and the campaign did not publish its raw data, so the number is best read as an illustration of one night rather than a measured rate.
The second half of the film is arguably more interesting. After the night out, the team invited men to watch the footage and the live sensor display. Their reactions ranged from embarrassment to disbelief. One man called what he saw "so ridiculous", and another was visibly shocked at a stranger trying to kiss one of the women. Seeing the contact counted and mapped made the behaviour much harder to dismiss as harmless flirting.
What the wider data says about harassment in Brazil
The campaign drew on a survey that ActionAid released in May 2016. Carried out by YouGov, it questioned 503 Brazilian women aged over 16 in cities across all regions of the country, as part of a four-country study.
- 86 per cent said they had been harassed in public in their city. Thailand had the same figure; India was at 79 per cent and England at 75 per cent.
- The most common forms in Brazil were wolf-whistling (77 per cent), staring (74 per cent) and sexual comments (57 per cent).
- Half said they had been followed in the street, 44 per cent had been touched, and 39 per cent had been insulted or sworn at.
One correction to the way this campaign is often described online: the 86 per cent figure is about harassment in public spaces generally, such as streets and public transport, not specifically in nightclubs. The survey asked where women felt most afraid, and the top answers were walking in the street, going out or coming home after dark, and travelling on public transport.
Brazil has since tightened the law. In September 2018, a few months after the film was released, a new federal law made importunação sexual, an unwanted sexual act against someone without their consent, a specific crime. Before that, many cases of groping in public were treated only as minor offences.
What a sensor can and cannot prove
The dress was a powerful piece of storytelling, but it is worth being clear about its limits.
- A sensor records contact, not intent. It cannot tell an accidental bump in a crowded club from a deliberate grope. The women's own account and the video are what show that the touching was unwanted.
- Three women on a few nights is not a survey. The experiment shows that the problem is real and easy to observe, not how common it is across all clubs.
- It was an advertisement. Schweppes, a drinks brand that traces its roots to Geneva in 1783, paid for the campaign, and brands gain goodwill from causes like this. That does not make the message wrong, but the film was edited to persuade.
Those caveats do not weaken the main point. Large surveys such as ActionAid's show that unwanted touching is widespread, and the dress made something usually invisible impossible to ignore.
Why it struck a nerve
The campaign arrived during the #MeToo wave that began in late 2017, when many brands were trying to speak about harassment. Plenty of those efforts were criticised as empty. Dress for Respect stood out because it measured something instead of just making a statement, and because it was aimed at men rather than at women.
Ogilvy shared the work on social media in November 2018, and it was picked up by international media. The campaign kept circulating for years afterwards, and we returned to it in sensor-equipped dresses in a campaign about unwanted touching. For more ads built around social issues, see social-issue advertisements and their visual arguments.
You can watch the campaign through Ogilvy's post below.
Title: The Dress for Respect
— Ogilvy (@Ogilvy) November 28, 2018
Client: Schweppes
Office: @OgilvyBrasil
See more design work here: https://t.co/plNvU4NFAw#ClientWork pic.twitter.com/8QRDU960uh
What bystanders and venues can do
Most people who see harassment in a club do nothing, often because they are unsure what to do. Bystander training groups commonly teach a few simple options, sometimes called the five Ds:
- Distract: interrupt the situation, for example by asking the person a question or pretending to know them.
- Delegate: get help from staff, security or a friend.
- Document: if it is safe and the person targeted wants it, note what happened or film from a distance.
- Delay: check in with the person afterwards and ask if they are all right.
- Direct: if you feel safe, tell the harasser clearly to stop.
Clubs and bars can help by training staff, making it easy to report incidents and taking complaints seriously. And for men who watched this film and recognised themselves in it, the lesson is straightforward: do not touch strangers without being invited to.
Sources: Social Samosa, 4 June 2018: Schweppes highlights the harassment faced by women at nightclubs with Dress For Respect; Quartz, 28 November 2018: Ogilvy's smart dress shows how often women are groped at clubs; Agência Brasil, 20 May 2016: survey shows 86% of Brazilian women have been harassed in public; campaign images and film by Ogilvy and Ogilvy Brasil for Schweppes.
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