We created the #AskFirst campaign because we wanted to raise awareness about "Revenge Porn" (private sexual pictures and videos that are leaked without the permission of all participants) for our client: The Danish Women's Society.
The subject of revenge porn was on the very top of their agenda, as 90% of the victims of revenge porn are reported to be women. Revenge porn is also a crime that is dramatically on the rise, with victims being as young as 11 and 12 years of age. V
The objective of the campaign was to speak directly to men between 18-24 years of age (who are the #1 perpetrators and consumers of Revenge Porn) with a strong message that would have the opportunity to potentially cross borders, and to use the momentum to apply pressure to lawmakers in Denmark to toughen laws on revenge porn.
Initially we were going to shoot a faux porn and upload it to various porn sites as a digital guerilla stunt, but during out research and testing we found that the sheer volume of pornogrphy that is uploaded to these sites and the algorithms would bury our video, and we would see very little (if any) views at all.
We then started contacting various pornographic sites in order to inquire about the potential for a boost in the video and to get some support for the campaign. We were very surprised and taken back when MindGeek (the world's largest distributor of pornography) decided to co-signed the campaign and dedicate their time and resources to not only promote the campaign but also to implement a new content removal page to help victims of revenge porn remove videos faster.
This "odd couple" constellation of the Danish Women's Society (who is one of the oldest and most respected feminist organisations in the world.) and MindGeek was enough to raise eyebrows and create the foundation for this amazing campaign.
We shot the video on an iphone in order to get the most real product as possible. We tagged the video as revenge porn on all platforms with "Ex Girlfriend doesn't know I shared this!" and created a title and script that would be as realistic as possible "catch" the viewer engaging in consuming revenge porn. Rather than focus on social media distribution, we would distribute the campaign primarily on porn sites: YouPorn, PornHub, and RedTube. This would give us access to the exact target audience in the most realistic setting possible.
When the video was released we focused our efforts on PR and TV in order to get as much earned media for the campaign as possible. Oath provided amplification in Europe, MindGeek provided their PR team in the US.
The results were a staggering 200 Million+ people reached with the video being seen over 1.5 million times porn sites alone during the campaign period, this resulted in thousands of social shares, 50+ articles around the world resulting in an additional 2 million coverage views to an online readership of over 550 million, The Danish Women's Society were front page of every single Danish media site for days, including 6 appearances TV.
The momentum in the campaign resulted in the Minister of Justice Søren Pape publicly acknowledging the need for harsher punishments for perpetrators of the crime. The porn pages also introduced a content removal program on their pages to remove illegal and harmful pornography much faster, and their move sent a clear message to the porn community that the market leaders stand with victims to fight against the distribution of illegal and harmful content.
