The Campaign

What looks innocent is not what it seems. The dangers are right where we least expect them, inside our very phones and social networks. To make these dangers meaningful for parents, we hijacked an image of innocence and security – a child’s bedroom – and used it to showcase the dangers lurking under their very noses. We visualised data on child sexual abuse by turning each element of the bedroom into a shocking infographic. A bed represented the rate of reported child sexual abuse cases in Malaysia. A clock visualised how frequently a child is raped. Doing this, we turned the data into a deeply personal, visceral experience for parents. Each piece was crafted intuitively to tug at our audience’s heartstrings, shocking them out of their apathy and dialling up the urgency to protect their kids online.

The Brief

Overall budget: under RM50,000

Creative Execution

During the year-end school holiday, we hijacked Malaysia’s biggest book sale The Big Bad Wolf, a 10-day event where parents of young children are a key demographic, and set up our bedroom at its entrance. Unsuspecting parents were drawn to the Ikea-style exhibition. They quickly discovered that, much like how child predators operate, things were not as they seemed. What looked familiar and innocent, like the clock or the kid-sized bed, were actually hiding infographics that revealed shocking statistics upon closer inspection. At every point in their journey, they were redirected to our website which hosts a comprehensive cybersafety guide. There, they could learn practical tips on spotting and stopping child predators in their tracks.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Parents who visited the exhibition were visibly disturbed by what was presented to them, and most lingered to explore the room. 4 out of 5 parents we spoke to said they realised that they were not doing enough to protect their kids online. But beyond raising awareness of the problem, we wanted parents who visited our website to go through the cybersafety guide. Our goal was to achieve a conversion rate of 15%, in line with NGO benchmarks . We successfully converted 19% of website visitors to visit our cybersafety guide, outperforming our target by +4 percentage points and achieving a conversion rate that surpassed NGO benchmarks by 26%.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The data we have on the growing problem of online child grooming is but a drop in an ocean of information. To get our audience to face the facts, we needed to bring the numbers to life – literally. So we presented the data in a setting where it was most relevant: Within a child’s bedroom.

One big reason parents had become desensitised to reality was the belief that they were already taking appropriate action, like installing parental controls and occasionally monitoring their kid’s Internet usage. The problem? These measures are simply not enough to stop online predators, whose methods are much more insidious. They’re experts at circumventing superficial barriers and accessing kids through social media, appearing harmless to victims and their parents. They had perfected the art of grooming kids under a veil of innocence. We wanted parents to pay closer attention to the real signs of danger. The predator’s mask of innocence over dark intentions was jolting, and this inspired the work. So we hijacked a deeply personal picture of innocence and set up our startling exhibition where parents would find it impossible to ignore.