The Campaign

Earphone Bully puts you in the shoes of a silent victim. With the current generation welded to their earphones, it uses 3D sound to put a bully in your head. This creates a powerful roleplay tool to prepare kids for schoolyard bullies and gives them ways to speak up about it. It's also about empathy and understanding for bystanders and parents, and for bullies themselves. You don’t really know what it’s like until you step into their shoes.

Success of the Campaign

What makes this unique, is it’s not just for one organisation, it’s for any anti-bully group in the world to customise with local support info; and global interest is now growing, with support from digital radio stations. Already in Australia, four major anti-bully groups are using it, including the largest government-funded group. This opens the door to have Earphone Bully as a classroom resource in all Australian schools.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

The website and mobile site were initially launched in April using digital radio and by directly offering the EarphoneBully resource to anti-bully organisations who work with kids. Bullies get away with it when no-one talks, so it gives people easy ways to speak up – which also shares the website. It's designed to be passed on through social networks and email and offers personalisation when passing onto friends. (The Earphone Bully knows nearly 600 names). It also prompts people who have been bullied to take the first step and tell someone they trust with a simple email.