Child Focus: STOP CHILD PORNO

Credits & Description:

Category: Charity and Not for Profit

Advertiser: CHILD FOCUS

Product/Service: PUBLIC AWARENESS

Agency: GREY BRUSSELS

Creative Director: Koen Nuyts (Grey)

Art Director: Emmanuel Colin (Grey)

Copy: Gilles De Bruyère (Grey)

Art Buyer/TV Producer: Sophie Populaire (Grey)

Photographer: Christophe Gilbert (Saga)

Cinematographer: Nebil Ben Yadir (Caviar)

Media placement: Consumer PR - Belga News Agency and all the national daily press - 22nd of March 2012



Summary of the Campaign

ChildFocus is the Belgian Foundation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children. It hunts down images of childporn on the internet through the hotline www.stopchildporno.be where surfers can anonymously report images of child pornography.



ChildFocus wanted to raise the awareness of this website.



Because advertising budget was limited, we built a PR campaign.



We aimed a target group that is more likely to see child porn: viewers of pornography. But how could ChildFocus reach the users of internet pornography in a way that didn’t shame them but motivated them to report images of child porn? We used their stars: Pornstars.



We enlisted the help of 2 famous pornstars, Rocco Sifredi and PussyKat, as spokespersons against child pornography, then called Christophe Gilbert, a famous advertising photographer and Nabil Ben Yadir, a prize winning director, to shoot 2 images for print and a viral movie.



Message: child pornography is not porn - it is the sexual abuse of children.



We launched a press release including the 2 posters and the viral movie, which we put simultaneously on Youtube.



The same day all 4 major TV channels aired the 30-second movie in peak time and interviewed our spokesperson. The day after, the campaign was all over the national media. With discussions in newspapers, blogs, on TV and radio shows.



The debate continued in Parliament, where politicians discussed the opportunity to reinforce the fight against sexual abuse of children. And more importantly after the campaign the number of alerts on www.stopchildporno.be tripled from 5 to 15 a day.



The Situation

Child Focus, a Belgian NGO mainly active in searching for missing children but also, which is less known, fighting the sexual exploitation of children. Via a web hotline (www.stopchildporno.be) people coming across images of sexually abused children on the internet can signal them anonymously. First, we needed to raise awareness of the existence of the website, then, as it is those visiting sex sites that are most likely to come across pedo-pornographic material, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t shame them away and gained their sympathy and involvement. With the objective being to create maximum awareness with minimum budget, we chose PR.



The Goal

To create maximum awareness of the website www.stopchildporno.be, Everyone using the web must know that there is a trustworthy organisation to which they can report anonymously any case of child porn they may come across. The criteria for success we agreed upon with the client was to double the number of alerts on www.stopchildporno.be.



We also needed to make it very clear that child porn is not porn but the sexual abuse of children and should be banned from the world of sex entertainment. This battle could only be won if the visitors of adult entertainment sites supported our mission.



The Strategy

Two-fold:

Firstly, address our 'sex surfers' without shaming them away and motivate them to report pedopornographic material.

Secondly, create maximum awareness of www.stopchildporno.be among a wider audience.



We started from the core of our message: child pornography is not pornography - it is the sexual abuse on children. So who could better prove this point than the stars of the porn industry themselves? So we asked 2 famous pornstars, Rocco Sifredi and PussyKat, to be spokespersons against child pornography. We knew that however logical, this approach would inevitably raise an amount of surprise and controversy, and thus interest from the media.



With a simple press release we provided the media with the 30-second viral movie and 2 posters/ads we had developed, trustful that the word would spread, which would result in a lot of exposure and, most importantly, help increase the rate of alerts on www.stopchildporno.be.



Execution

First we needed the support of the porn industry. We contacted Rocco Sifredi and PussyKat and asked for their collaboration. Both porn-stars agreed. We called Christophe Gilbert, a top Belgian advertising photographer and Nabil Ben Yadir, the prize winning film director (from 'Les Barons') Both joined the project. We shot the viral film and 2 images for print/poster. These elements were included in a press release.



There the chain reaction began.



All national media talked about the campaign, 4 major TV channels aired the 30-second movie in peak time. Our spokesman and communication manager were interviewed both on radio and TV several times. Meanwhile we monitored all the discussions started in newspapers, blogs, on TV and radio news programs, and reacted if necessary. The debate even continued in the Belgian Parliament, where politicians discussed the opportunity to reinforce the fight against sexual abuse of children on the web.



Documented Results

Free publicity reached 4.7m viewers on TV, 5.5m readers via newspapers and magazines (53 articles) and 1.6m people via radio. The viral film was viewed 75,000 times on YouTube and more than 500 unique reports were written on websites and blogs worldwide. From a small budget of €17,000 we created at least €400,000 of PR.



The number of alerts on www.stopchildporno.be tripled from 5 alerts a day before to 15 a day after the campaign.



Most importantly the quality of the alerts is extremely high. They come from men over 40 years old, meaning that we reached our target audience and we convinced them to help actively to fight child porn.



The debate about the need to fight child porn was stimulated and the Minister responsible for Youth Protection was involved in a national debate about the best way to protect children against sexual abuse.