With millions of shares, a top 3 hit, 100s of schools showing it and a law to make shaming a sexual offence, KPN impacts society.
Many Dutch parents ask their kids 'how was your day?,' but hardly ever talk about their day online. While beautiful things like love, friendship, and fun take place, less beautiful things like bullying, grooming, shaming or fake news also occur. And parents have no clue. This is the case with sexting: while it’s a normal, private way for teens to flirt that’s based on mutual trust, it also makes them vulnerable to online shaming, with potentially serious consequences from depression and loneliness to even suicide.
Based on research from Victim Support Fund, we shifted our perspective to the real problem with online shaming: the massive group of forwarders. Peer pressure can push you to act tough for a split second – and you have just forwarded someone’s picture without consent.
We knew the young audience is hard to reach with ads, so we packed our message in a piece of music and released it through socials, Spotify, Youtube, and radio airtime first.
Focusing on online shaming and highlighting that it’s not victims but forwarders that are responsible, we created content that Gen-Z would watch and share. We collaborated with pop star MEAU to release a powerful song and music video based on real stories. The narrative follows two teenagers who share intimate photos and how their lives begin to unravel with terrifying consequences when one decides to forward the photo. Our message is loud and clear: Think twice before you forward.