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Judith Kerr’s 1968 classic children’s novel The Tiger Who Came to Tea has inspired a new short film for Women’s Aid that highlights domestic violence in the home. Unusually, the use of a children’s story is crucial as staggering figures show that 1.8 million youngsters experienced domestic abuse last year.

In the video, the tiger from the original book is replaced with a ‘monster,’ telling the story of a young girl, Lily, witnessing domestic abuse in her home. As the narrative unfolds, the devastating truth emerges that the ‘monster’ is not imaginary but her father.

House 337 is the ad agency that came up with the concept and has worked with the charity for several years on campaigns, including ‘He’s Coming Home,’ which launched during the World Cup and gained notable praise. The work is always pro-bono and because there is no media spend behind it, the agency says it always tries to align with a cultural moment.

“We wanted to feature Lioness Alex Scott and draw from her experience of growing up in an abusive household,” explains senior creative Paul Hancock. “That didn’t work out, but we kept chipping away at it, reworking it to fit different moments. World Book Day was an open goal, especially as it was so close to International Women’s Day.”

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No ad can change behaviors

Women’s Aid mission statement is ‘Until Women and Children Are Safe’. Up until now, most of the charity’s creative campaigns have focused solely on women. This time, the creatives wanted to focus more on the children and family aspect of the charity’s work.

Both Hancock and Newbold are parents themselves, so this project felt that little bit more personal and an important angle to explore. “We also realized that focusing on children could bring an educational element to the campaign,” adds Newbold. “After all, if someone is capable of abusing their partner, no advert, no matter how hard-hitting, is likely to change their behavior.”

As part of the campaign’s extension, the creatives worked with teachers to create a version of the film and book aimed at schoolchildren, alongside lesson plans for classroom use. These lesson plans help children recognize the signs of domestic abuse and understand what constitutes appropriate behavior from an early age.

Tailored for primary school children through to sixth formers, these resources are being accredited by the educational body PSHE and made available to schools nationwide. “Because if we can stop little monsters from becoming real ones later in life, we might just create real, long-term change,” Newbold states. “When developing the campaign, we wanted a name and theme that instantly evoked the charm of a classic children’s book; something that immediately placed the viewer in the world of bedtime stories. The Tiger

Who Came to Tea provided the perfect reference.”

Despite the word monster in the title, the initial warmth between mother and daughter, the charming animation, and the wistful music served as an effective misdirect, so the audience wouldn’t anticipate the dark turn the story takes.

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The original storyline offered a ready-made narrative structure: a little girl welcomes a seemingly charming visitor, chaos ensues, and then her father comes home. “This framework was ripe for subversion,” says Hancock. “Allowing us to weave in the core themes of domestic abuse, building tension towards an escalation that culminates in the real father knocking on the door.”

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Depicting ‘charming monsters’

According to the duo, Women’s Aid has worked tirelessly with media owners to reframe how abusers are portrayed. “Too often, they are forgiven or even glamorized because, in reality, many abusers are expert manipulators - highly charismatic and skilled at deception,” says Newbold. “This presents a huge problem: when survivors come forward, even their own families sometimes struggle to believe that their seemingly charming partner could be abusive.” He explains that they wanted to challenge this perception, helping friends, family members, and even children recognize the behaviors of these “charming monsters”.

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What makes this campaign so special is the level of craft in the animation techniques used, which was quite a long process. “When you’re creating 90 seconds of it with no budget, everyone involved has to be truly invested in what they’re doing,” explains Hancock. “The initial character designs and backgrounds were hand-drawn, with textures, lighting, and atmospheric effects added digitally.”

To ensure accuracy in lighting and perspective within Lily’s house, small but to-scale physical sets were built, lit, and filmed as reference plates. The ‘smoke’ effects were created by filming ink in water and layering those elements into the scenes where needed. “While making the film, we discovered that our lead artist and animator had a secret weapon - her Mum,” according to Hancock, who adds, “It turned out that her Mum had also been her art teacher at school, and since they shared a similar drawing style, she was brought in to help. We loved that.”

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A ‘false sense of security’

The hand-drawn quality was crucial in evoking the charm of a classic children’s storybook, something traditional rather than overtly modern or cutting-edge. “After all, domestic abuse isn’t just a modern story, sadly,” says Newbold. “We aimed to lull the audience into a false sense of security.

The warmth and familiarity of the visuals make the moment when the story takes a dark turn all the more powerful. We needed something uniquely ours yet still rooted in the world of classic storybooks.” He adds that they deliberately avoided sparse or minimalistic aesthetics, opting instead for a rich, layered style that could evolve as the story unfolds and darkens. Typography was just as important, too. “In children’s books, type plays a key role in storytelling, bringing to life the sounds of a knock at the door, the crash of a shattered plate, or the cruelty of verbal abuse,” he continues. “We wanted it to feel hand-drawn too. Having recently worked with the lettering artist Alison Carmichael, we took a chance and asked her to join the project. We were delighted when she came on board.”

According to Newbold and Hancock, momentum is always difficult to build and maintain on pro bono projects. “Luckily, Paul and I are like a dog with a bone. We knew this campaign had the potential to be not just great, but genuinely important for the charity,” says Newbold. “But it was so ambitious that the production requirements seemed impossible.”

This meant they had to take a different approach by securing production partners first, which meant they would have a better chance of making the project happen. While in another edit with director Guy Manwaring and Merman’s managing director Shiv Murphy, we mentioned the idea and they both jumped at the chance “right there in the room.”

Newbold says: “And then there was the budget or lack of it. House 337 works with Women’s Aid on a pro bono basis, so we rely heavily on the generosity of production partners to bring the work to life. Thankfully, some incredibly talented people were more than happy to contribute to such an important project, especially as they loved the idea too.”

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This article was originally published in The Drum.

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