NEW YORK—'She Runs,' a campaign conducted by Canadian public relations firm Veritas Communications for leading sportswear retailer Sport Chek (in collaboration with Interval House, Canada’s leading center for abused women and their children) took home the Platinum SABRE Awards for the best public relations campaign of the year at last night’s North American SABRE Awards dinner in New York.

The campaign faced a unique communications challenge: delivering information about how to safely leave abusive relationships to women across Canada, without revealing the information to their abusers. To do that, the campaign created a playlist called She Runs, designed on the surface to act as a running aide, but in reality providing secret lifesaving information.

Delivered via QR codes that linked to the playlist in women’s changing rooms and inside women’s running shoes, the playlist consisted of eight tracks, each covering a specific topic related to escaping abuse. The playlist ultimately reached more than 12 million women without any mention in the mainstream media and without coming to the notice of their abusers.

“I don’t think we have every recognized a PR campaign for generating zero media attention,” says Paul Holmes, editor-in-chief of PRovoke Media and chairman of the SABRE judges. “But in this instance, any kind of widespread attention could have created additional danger for the intended audience, and the PR team came up with an amazing creative solution that our judges loved.”

The 'She Runs' campaign beat out four other finalists for Best in Show honors. They were:

2. Michael CeraVe—CeraVe with Ogilvy Public Relations
3. Grasping at straws to save the environment—phade with Finn Partners
4. SHT—IKEA Canada with Edelman
5. Feeding in Gaza—World Central Kitchen with FGS Global

The biggest winners on the night were Golin and Zeno Group, each of whom took home five SABRE trophies for their clients. There were four trophies each for Edelman, Finn Partners, and Ogilvy PR, and three each for Bulleit Group, Burson, MSL, Porter Novelli, and Weber Shandwick.

A complete list of winners can be found here.