shoppable girls

Objectives

Our objective was to increase awareness of sex trafficking and its warning signs here in Canada. We needed to shift perceptions so that young women & girls believe that it can happen to them. We need parents to be vigilant in safeguarding their children and teen girls to recognize the signs and take action.

Insight

Human trafficking cases have been steadily climbing in Canada for the last 10 years, with two thirds of cases involving sexual services. And despite 93% of victims being Canadian, and 70% of victims being Females 25 and under, there’s still a misinterpretation that it’s not a local issue. Parents are aware of sex trafficking, but don’t think it happens here or that their daughters are at risk. Teen girls have heard of sex trafficking, but don’t fully understand it and don’t feel they’re at risk. This is largely due to the pathways to sex trafficking being complex, often involving recruitment through existing relationships & friendships.  

This led to our key insight, which is that our girls are being lured into the sex trafficking industry, but it goes unnoticed because it doesn’t happen in plain sight.

Strategy

To sex traffickers, girls are merely products. Based on our key insight, our strategy was to show people this in a way that they will be able to recognize. We also needed to create outrage in order to bring warranted concern back to the issue of sex trafficking. To do this, we decided to show people that this is happening in a way that they will be able to recognize: through the lens of shopping.

This led to the big idea which was Shoppable Girls, in which we created a traditional retail campaign where the young women were the merchandise. The campaign featured young girls in streetwear as one would see in traditional fashion ads, while alluding that all was not as it seems. Users were then navigated to site where it was revealed that the products weren’t the clothes. The site then contained valuable information on the warning signs of sex trafficking in order to increase awareness & education of the issue.

From a media perspective, we aligned with both traditional and online environments in order reach our core targets of parents and teen girls through their preferred channels. This enabled us to disrupt their shopping behaviours, driving home the strategy and creating the perfect union between creative and media.

Execution

The campaign was rolled out in two steps. The first step was to create buzz using an activation, in which we took over a retail storefront in downtown Toronto and created window displays where young women were featured as merchandise. This garnered significant earned media attention, helping to create awareness and reinvigorate concern over the issue of sex trafficking. Paired with OOH placements in high-traffic areas close to shopping centers, we aligned with & disrupted the shopping behaviours of parents, as they’re accustomed to shopping at brick & mortar locations.

The second step was to roll out an online campaign targeting teen girls, as this is where they spend their time and is their preferred channel for shopping. To do this, we leveraged the latest shoppable formats across Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat in which teen girls would engage with the units to see the different products. They were then prompted to navigate to site where the big reveal happened that the products weren’t actually the clothing. The site also contained resources for the teen girls to help them better understand what sex trafficking is and how to identify the signs. The campaign also had ads targeted to parents, aligning with their social media adoption and navigating them to resources to get informed on sex trafficking.

Results

The storefront activation was covered by Toronto’s top news publications. This resulted in 109 earned online mentions, yielding an estimated 117M earned impressions. Additionally, mentions of “Covenant House” increased by 23% year-over-year, showing that people were associating this back to the organization. In tandem with over 57.2M OOH impressions (representing a 41% over-delivery), this helped to drive mass exposure & awareness amongst our parent audience.

The social media campaign drove 40.1M social impressions reaching 100% of our potential teen girl audience across Facebook, Instagram & Snapchat. The campaign also drove 61K visits to site, resulting in a high number of teen girls navigating to site to get informed on the signs of sex trafficking.

Client Data Sources:
Meltwater for PR and organic social impressions and engagement numbers
Google Analytics for click-throughs to Shoppable Girls Traffick Stop site