2015 Silver Best Use of Social Media

Leo Burnett London

NSPCC

NSPCC Share Aware

The Team

Beri Cheetham, Alison Steven, Liam Bushby, Ryan Dilley, Sarah-Jayne Ljungstorm, Danielle Locke, Kit Altin, Laura Wilkin, Frances Gibbs

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 had a lot of access to the web but 51% of parents of 8-11 year-olds didn’t use parental controls. Meanwhile, most digital social spaces did not verify their users and self- regulation was a farce. NSPCC wanted to enable children to enjoy the web safely by empowering parents to educate and safeguard 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 years, various campaigns have helped keep children safe: “Stranger danger”, “Charley Says”, “Stop, Look and Listen”. NSPCC needed an equally effective mnemonic for the 21st century to keep children safe online – a message that would drive long-term behavioural change and help people to be as good a parent online as offline.

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

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

Creativity

Two creative videos walked the fine line between dark and light to create a profound impact. “I Saw Your Willy” centred on a boy, Alex, who found that sharing photos can have serious consequences. “Lucy and the Boy” featured a girl who assumed the person she met online was who he said he was.

Using both genders gave every parent a film their child could relate to. These 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 let parents contribute to a crowdsourced advice hub to help untangle the web in an easy, approachable way.

Results

Share Aware generated huge attention, with 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 being watched on average every second and in 62 countries. The films were so popular with teachers that NSPCC produced a teaching toolkit, distributed 30,000 leaflets in schools and answered a stream of requests to speak to schoolchildren. Six local police authorities ran #shareaware campaigns. And two leading kids’ platforms, Mind Candy (which runs Moshi Monsters and Pop Jam) and Bin Weevils, overhauled security as a direct result of the campaign. Most importantly of all, countless children are now safer online.