Black and blue or gold and white?

The Internet phenomenon of guessing the colour of a dress has inspired another viral campaign, asking a serious question about domestic violence: “Why is it so hard to see black and blue?”

Ireland/Davenport, a Johannesburg-based ad agency, created the image of a woman in a gold and white dress covered in bruises and rushed to get the image produced to ride the momentum of #thedress and publish in time for International Women’s Day Sunday.

“We just thought it was so weird something so insignificant like that dress was getting all this hype while a true message (about) anti-women abuse was more deserving,” said Wihan Meerholz, the creative director behind the design.

Within 24 hours, Meerholz worked with two of his colleagues — art director Caitlyn Goldring and copywriter Werner Cloete — to conceptualize the image, recruit an account manager as a model, hold a photo shoot and find a charity to partner with.

They offered the image to the Salvation Army South Africa, giving the charity 45 minutes on Thursday afternoon to decide whether it wanted to run the image with its logo in the next day’s newspaper.

“We went for it straightaway because domestic violence is such a huge problem, not only in the world but in here in South Africa,” said Carin Holmes, pointing to packed shelters that the Salvation Army runs for women escaping violence.

Under the main headline, the poster reads: “It’s only an illusion if you think it was her choice. One in 6 women are victims of abuse. Stop abuse against women.”

Holmes hopes it will encourage those experiencing violence and those witnessing it to speak out.

“Women don’t even speak about it, they keep quiet,” said Holmes, a spokesperson for Salvation Army. “It’s definitely a real problem.”

Almost as soon as the image was posted to Twitter Friday, Holmes was flooded with calls from all over the world. By Friday evening, it had been retweeted nearly 8,900 times and favourited by over 4,000 users.

“This is biggest social media explosion a campaign has ever seen,” said Holmes.

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But she wants the attention to stay focused on the cause.

“It’s not about the Salvation Army, it’s about the problem. If we can save one lady through this, that’s good enough.”