Immigrant Council: Swiping Out Sex Trafficking

Credits & Description:

Client: The Immigrant Council Of Ireland
Product: The Immigrant Council Of Ireland
Entrant: Eightytwenty Dublin, Ireland
Title: Swiping Out Sex Trafficking
Product/Service: The Immigrant Council Of Ireland
Entrant Company: Eightytwenty Dublin, Ireland
Advertising Agency: Eightytwenty Dublin, Ireland
Creative Director: Alexis Bouckaert (Eightytwenty)
Planning Director: Cathal Gillen (Eightytwenty)
Copywriter: David O'keeffe (Eightytwenty)
Photographer: Darren Gorey (Eightytwenty)
Designer: David Carberry (Eightytwenty)
Account Executive: Leah Ernstberger (Eightytwenty)
Account Director: Clara Kelleher (Eightytwenty)
Ceo: David Connor (Eightytwenty)
The Campaign
In Ireland, an alarming part of prostitution is based on human trafficking. Immigrant women and girls are tricked and forced into the sex trade.
One of the missions of The Immigrant Council of Ireland is to put a stop to this. They briefed us with raising awareness among young men that many prostitutes are victims of coercion.
Without a media budget, we opted for shock tactics in the hope the message would travel on social media. We used Tinder, an location based, ad-free mobile dating app, to illustrate that there's more than meets the eye to some seemingly consensual encounters.
We created seemingly normal but fake profiles of women which, when explored, illustrated the real stories behind sex trafficking.
The shock tactic worked to great effect and as chatter kicked off organically, we reached out to online and offline publications to generate further awareness and support.
The Brief
With respect to the issue of sex trafficking, the ultimate goal of the Immigrant Council of Ireland is to reduce its incidence and helps its victims.
One of the main ways to facilitate this is, is to prompt legislative change though public awareness and PR pressure.
Execution
We created fake profiles, based on real people helped by the Immigrant Council. Each story illustrated a different facet of human traffic: abuse, coercion, under-age exploitation.
A core aspect of Tinder is the linear way in which users explore each other's profile. We used that to create narratives with the photos, each becoming successively more revealing and extreme. The photos were branded images with copy explaining the succession of photos and call for people to get involved.
We launched the campaign during the Dublin Web Summit, an event which draws massive international media to generate as much buzz as possible.
We had 12-15k matches on Tinder, a multiple number of which would also had viewed the profiles. A big part of the success of the campaign was the coverage it received in Irish and global media, in places such as Time, The Journal, Mashable, The Daily Mail, Vice, Huffington Post (US, UK and Germany), Independent, France24, Buzzfeed, Telegraph.co.uk, Metro (Ireland/US), Mirror (UK & Ireland), and Fast Company amongst others. The fact that the campaign featured so heavily in global media also resulted in additional pressure put on the Irish government from abroad. There were over 100k social shares & engagements, 45 million social impressions, with an estimated earned media value over €1.5m, (73,000% ROI). The campaign also resulted in thousands of emails being sent to TD’s. Three weeks after the campaign finished, the Irish Government published a new Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill.
The Strategy
The starting point of the strategy was exposing young men to impactful creative, within an environment where they dont expect advertising or PSAs, Tinder.
Our social & PR plan involved two strands. Firstly we sent the press release and visuals to influencer media (PSFK, Broadsheet in Ireland) knowing if traditional media covered it first then other “new” media wouldn’t be as keen to publish. Secondly using Sysomos, a social listening tool, we were able to identify influencers and publications which covered Tinder previously and targeted these to spread the campaign.
We also geo-targeted profiles pinpointed at the Dublin Web Summit in Dublin using Android emulators, where the world’s tech media (and influencers) had gathered for the world’s largest tech event. This hack allowed us target different areas without having to be there.