2015 Gold Best Writing

Leo Burnett London

NSPCC

NSPCC Share Aware

The Team

Campaign overview

The internet is full of usefulness and magic, but also brings an assortment of dangers into one easily accessible place.

Parents felt confused by the ever-evolving online world – their kids often knew more about it than they did. Children have a lot of access to the web but 51% of parents of 8-11 year olds don’t use parental controls. Meanwhile, most digital social spaces do not verify their users and self-regulation is a farce.

NSPCC wanted to make sure children enjoyed the web safely by investing parents with the means to educate them.

Share Aware got shared and created lasting change. Teachers and local police forces began to use the films in teaching, while two leading children’s platforms overhauled security as a direct result of the campaign. And each time another parent started a conversation, another child was made safer.

Strategy

Over the decades, various campaigns have helped keep British children safe: “Stranger danger”, “Charley Says”, “Stop, Look and Listen”.

NSPCC needed to find an equally effective mnemonic for the 21st century to keep children safe online. A message that would drive long-term behavioural change and help parents to be as good online as they are offline

With sharing a significant factor in children’s exposure to distressing content, sharing became the central message and the distribution strategy. Videos were initially posted on Facebook and then spread worldwide via Twitter, boosted by spontaneous celebrity support.

On the NSPCC Net Aware website, parents could access Share Aware advice and resources including risk reviews of many of the most common sites, apps and social networks used by kids, as well as simple how-to guides to setting parental controls – and what might be appropriate for each age group.

Creativity

Two videos succeeded in walking the fine line between dark and light, and in a way that had profound impact. “I Saw Your Willy” centred on a boy, Alex, who found that sharing photos can have serious consequences. “Lucy and The Boy” told a story about a girl who assumed that the person she met online was who he said he was.

Using both genders gave every parent a film that their child could relate to. The films were designed to be shared, both digitally and in the real world, to trigger parent-child conversations using a medium both generations felt comfortable with.

Popular tweets such as “Have you seen Alex’s willy?” and “See Alex’s willy then show it to your kids” gained huge attention, while the hashtag #shareaware let people join the conversation.

Net Aware allowed parents to easily contribute to a crowdsourced advice hub that helped untangle the web, all with an approachably straightforward, no-nonsense tone.

Results

Share Aware generated huge attention, with a total of 65 million social impressions from a relatively small budget.

The initial Facebook video post reached more than two million people on launch weekend – half organically, without paid media support. In six weeks, #shareaware achieved a Twitter reach of 54.8 million, helped by huge celebrity support, while the films were still watched on average every second and in 62 countries.

The films were so popular with teachers that NSPCC produced a teaching toolkit, with more than 30,000 Share Aware leaflets distributed in schools and a stream of requests for the NSPCC to speak to schoolchildren. Six local police authorities began running #shareaware campaigns. Two leading children’s platforms, Mind Candy (who run Moshi Monsters and Pop Jam) and Bin Weevils, overhauled their security as a direct result of the campaign.

Most importantly of all, countless children are now safer online.