Netsafe: Netsafe

Credits & Description:

Brand NETSAFE
Entrant DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND AUCKLAND
DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, New Zealand Entrant Company
DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, New Zealand Idea Creation
DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, New Zealand Production
DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, New Zealand PR
Damon Stapleton DDB Group New Zealand CCO
Shane Bradnick DDB Group New Zealand ECD
Brett Colliver DDB Group New Zealand CD
Mike Felix DDB Group New Zealand CD
Sarsha Drakeford DDB Group New Zealand Art Director
Geordie Wilson DDB Group New Zealand Copywriter
Judy Thompson DDB Group New Zealand Agency Producer
Alva Waldron DDB Group New Zealand Agency Producer
Mark Tretheway DDB Group New Zealand Editor
Nick White DDB Group New Zealand Editor
Dan Partington DDB Group New Zealand Sound Engineer
Justin Mowday DDB Group New Zealand CEO
James Blair DDB Group New Zealand Lead Business Partner
Katya Urlwin DDB Group New Zealand Business Director
Jaheb Barnett DDB Group New Zealand Business Director
David Owen DDB Group New Zealand Business Manager
Jarrod Stevenson DDB Group New Zealand Business Coordinator
Liz Knox DDB Group New Zealand Digital Director
Haydn Kerr DDB Group New Zealand Digital Creative Director
Johannes Gertz DDB Group New Zealand Executive Digital Producer
Simon Betton DDB Group New Zealand Senior Developer
Jason Vertongen DDB Group New Zealand Head of Digital Design
Paul Hutcheon DDB Group New Zealand Lead Front End Developer
Liam Norris DDB Group New Zealand Social Planner
Marcel de Ruiter DDB Group New Zealand Studio Director
Nick White DDB Group New Zealand Illustrator
Claudia McDonald DDB Group New Zealand / Mango Managing Director
Max Burt DDB Group New Zealand / Mango Senior Account Manager
Chloe Tonkin DDB Group New Zealand / Mango Account Manager


Synopsis
Email scamming is a huge issue in New Zealand and globally. It cripples businesses and ruins lives. The best defence against email scamming is a well-educated public who can correctly identify scams and know how to respond.

Cyber security is not something people get excited about. We needed them to be.

Communications targets:

- Make people aware of Re:scam, driving 30,000+ unique browsers to website

- Reach 1.5 million Kiwis through earned media coverage

- Reach more than 10 million people through global media coverage

Business targets:

- Raise awareness of Netsafe and its work in cyber-security both in NZ and internationally: 95% of coverage naming Netsafe with 2+ key messages

- Engagement with Re:scam: more than 20,000 emails forwarded to Re:scam

- Raise awareness of what email phishing scams look like: 100,000+ views of Re:scam promo video

Strategy
We identified the following key targets, which informed our choice of media:

Elderly/computer-uneducated, Youth, Local businesses, IT managers

Channels to reach:

Local news media across print/radio/television/online/verticals (e.g tech, trade), Global news and tech media

Our strategy was to firstly establish the credibility of Re:scam via a high reaching broadcast exclusive, driving the engagement needed to provide the proof points supporting subsequent waves of coverage.

Relying then on stats and content generated by the first wave of users, we pitched to national media and, once at sufficient scale, global media.

To make storytelling easier, the site itself became the ultimate interactive media kit – the Re:scam avatar talked users through what Re:scam does and why it exists. Hilarious conversations were hosted on-site which cropped up as embedded images on news stories around the world, and a thorough FAQ section ensured time-poor journalists had everything needed to file a comprehensive story quickly.

Relevancy
Email scamming has become a $12 billion-dollar industry affecting millions of people every year, but no one was talking about it. In fact it’s embarrassing to admit to. Also, phishing scammers are difficult to prosecute, and victims often have no means of receiving justice, or compensation.

Netsafe, a non-profit cyber-safety organisation, needed to find a way of fighting scammers, while also educating people and starting a conversation about what to look out for. To do this, we created an idea and executed a strategy specifically designed to pass the water-cooler test and create mass awareness via earned media.

Outcome
Tier 1:

Goal: Reach Kiwis through media, achieving 1.5 million reach (At least 1 x TV, 2 x radio, 5 x metro/regional newspaper, 5 online + verticals)

- Achieved: reach of more than 4 million in NZ media, across all major networks

Goal: Reach more than 10 million people through global media coverage

- Achieved: global media reach in excess of 279 million

- Featured by BBC, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, The Verge, BoingBoing, Mashable, Engadget, Wired and many more

Goal: Make people aware of Re:scam, driving to site, exceeding 30,000 unique browsers

- Achieved: 273,000 unique browsers visited Re:scam site. Vast majority of traffic driven by earned media traffic

Tier 3:

Goal: Raise awareness of Netsafe and its work in cyber-security both in NZ and internationally: 95% of coverage naming Netsafe with 2+ key messages

- Achieved: 100% name and message inclusion in coverage

Goal: Raise awareness of email phishing: greater than 100,000 views of Re:scam promo video

Achieved: Over 4,500,000 views

Goal: Engagement with Re:scam: more than 20,000 emails forwrded to Re:scam

- Achieved: A staggering 750,000 forwarded emails in just two months

Other significant results:

- Over 1 million emails sent to scammers, wasting 5+ years of their time

- Re:scam has been able to identify and intercept victims of scams, with Netsafe personally following up and offering advice

- The data being collected on trending scams, scammer’s techniques and IP addresses is being provided to global cyber-crime agencies.

Execution
The success of Re:scam hinged entirely on securing earned media coverage to drive users to the site and spark conversation about email phishing. To validate the idea and give credibility to the campaign, it was essential to secure a strong userbase from day one.

To launch, we offered an exclusive to The Project to interview Netsafe’s CEO about how Re:scam works and how Kiwis can avoid becoming victims of email phishing. In the 12 hours following, Re:scam received 3,600 forwarded emails and more than 18,000 unique browser views.

Following this, using updated data on engagement with Re:scam, we secured coverage in all major publications across NZ. Once we had critical mass, we pitched and secured coverage globally in the likes of The BBC and Mashable.

What started as a campaign to educate Kiwis about email phishing sparked a global conversation reaching more than 270 million people in just 4 weeks.

Campaign Description
Re:scam is an initiative aimed to help people avoid becoming fraud victims by occupying the time and resources of scammers using a well-educated artificially intelligent chat-bot. Instead of junking or deleting a scam email, people could now forward it to Re:scam which would continue the conversation indefinitely – or until the scammer stops replying.

Re:scam can take on multiple personas, imitating real human tendencies with humour and grammatical errors, and can engage with infinite scammers all at once, meaning it can continue any email conversation for as long as possible. Re:scam turns the tables on the scammers by wasting their time, and ultimately damaging the profits for scammers.

Users can check up on and share the unique conversations they initiate between Re:scam and their scammer. Once initiated by the users, the scammers themselves are creating our content, and more often than not, it's pure gold.