Advertisements about quitting smoking, wearing seatbelts and the iconic campaigns reminding Australians to "Slip, Slop, Slap" to prevent skin cancer - from the 1970s into the 2000s - are committed to public memory.
Psychologist Gregory Aldridge OAM said this was because governments funded them for years, where multiple ads were seen on TV across decades.
"Even when you were born, you were probably in a room where there was an anti-smoking ad on television," he said.
But in the 16 years since he joined the Domestic Violence Prevention Council, the psychologist said he had never seen an national campaign about ending violence against women that lasted more than six months.
Mr Aldridge, chief executive of EveryMan, praised the Slip, Slop, Slap campaigns for continually driving the point home until there they "significantly" changed behaviour through public education.
"The best place to do that is in the places where people are looking and listening," he said.
He said governments needed to commit five to 10 years' worth of funding for a nationwide multimedia campaign against domestic violence, not only for awareness but also to tell people how to respond.
Mr Aldridge said some of the "feeble" ads he had seen on air tended to stop right before getting to the useful part.
He said the creators often "had no idea" what abuse or coercive control looked like. He said a successful campaign would be designed with men's behaviour change experts who knew every "pervasive minimisation" thought and strategy someone would use.
"It's really easy to say, 'Men need to be talking to other men'. But there's no context, no nuance," Mr Aldridge said.
"It's not enough to say, 'You need to confront this' because if the people who [designed the campaign] knew what sort of things would be helpful, they would be adding that in. They'd be saying, 'You should be confronting them by saying this or this or this'.
"[Behaviour change experts] who work with guys every day, they know the excuses they make for themselves, the way they pretend that it doesn't matter, the warning signs that they ignore."
Mr Aldridge's organisation EveryMan - specialising in year-long programs for men with highly complex needs - has just been granted $1.6 million from the ACT government after a similar amount of funding was recently redirected.
He said they supported about 48 clients a year through trauma-informed services and had about 100 more men on their waiting list.
"We've had middle-class guys, senior public servants, and guys who were had been in trouble all their lives," he said.
