Teenagers and young adults are the group most impacted by sextortion threats - but many in this age group believe there’s no point in seeking help, assuming that even if they report threats or harm to authorities, nothing can be done.
Internet safety organisation Netsafe provides extensive support for those experiencing sextortion, and can even help young people get their nude images or videos removed from social media. However, very few young people in New Zealand know Netsafe offers this service, and most aren’t aware of the ways the organisation can support them more generally.
With Spicy Noods, we set out to reach the majority of teenagers and young people in New Zealand, and let them know Netsafe can provide real, effective solutions if they’re experiencing sextortion. We also wanted to ensure more young people know about the wider support Netsafe can provide, and feel the organisation is relevant to their lives.
We knew we needed to make sure our campaign didn’t trigger shame or embarrassment, retraumatise those impacted by sextortion, or come across as out of touch or judgemental. We also had to make our campaign memorable enough to cut through the hours of social media young people consume every day.
We started our strategy work by going straight to the target audience, to ensure we could reach young people effectively and authentically, without coming across as patronising, out of touch or cringe.
Given the sensitive nature of the subject matter, we had to create a safe space for honest discussions, so we could get worthwhile input and test potential approaches for the campaign without causing harm. We held focus groups with young people who already knew each other, and felt comfortable sharing their experiences, to hear more about how sextortion impacted their lives, and their uncensored thoughts on what would (and wouldn’t!) resonate with their cohorts.
Together with extensive research and behaviour change analysis, these discussions provided clear direction for our campaign: whatever we did needed to spark conversation, to ensure our message lived beyond a 30 second TikTok clip, and it needed to give young people a reason to pay attention. We also knew we had to do it on a limited budget.
We developed a number of potential concepts and tactics that met these criteria and we felt could resonate with our audience. We then went back to young people to test and refine these concepts before landing on our winner: Spicy Noods - a fake noodle brand with real world impact.
The campaign combined humour, Gen Z aesthetics, and lots and lots of free noodles to impart an important message: if your spicy noods are shared without your consent, Netsafe can help.
Young people told us the best way to get them to engage was to offer up a competition to win something, or through freebies. With Spicy Noods, we did both. We created a pop-up noodle stand to hand out hundreds of free Spicy Noods cups to hungry students on campus, all plastered with our key message: Netsafe can help you get your nudes removed. We also ran a nationwide competition to win a year’s supply of spicy noodles - entry simply required answering a question about Netsafe’s sextortion report.
These tactics served dual purpose. They gave young people a reason to pay attention by offering free food, but they also sparked IRL conversations about sextortion, Netsafe and the support available.
To make the biggest impact with limited funds, we centred our offline activities where we knew we could reach a large amount of young people in one place: university campuses. To support our guerilla noodle stand, we secured offline advertising on campus at orientation weeks, in university halls of residence, and in city centres where students socialise.
We also timed the campaign to run across the start of the university year, to ensure we reached people when they needed the message most urgently. For many young people, university is the first time they’re away from home and their traditional support systems - leaving them more vulnerable if they experience sextortion threats.
We layered these offline tactics with a comprehensive online campaign, including vox pops featuring real young people talking about nudes.
The Spicy Noods campaign was present at every single university in New Zealand, in tens of thousands of dorm rooms, and on hundreds of street corners near student hangouts.
One lucky young person won a year’s supply of spicy noodles, and hundreds of others enjoyed a free lunch with a side of online safety information. The teams handing out Spicy Noods at the campus pop up noodle stands overheard dozens of conversations about sextortion and sharing nudes, all instigated by our campaign.
These offline tactics were supported by our social media campaign, where we surpassed our goal of reaching the majority of young people in New Zealand. There are around 450,000 18- to 24-year-olds in New Zealand. Across all online channels, our campaign reached more than 1.2 million people - showing we hit a large proportion of our target age group on different channels, multiple times.
Most importantly, Netsafe recorded a 340% increase in sextortion reports in the period the campaign was live. Visits by males to the sextortion support section on Netsafe’s website also increased by 24% - particularly important as young men are heavily targeted by sextorters.
