2019 Winners & Shortlists

Background.

Bullying is a worldwide phenomenon that takes several forms, including physical attacks and bullying among children and adolescents. In Egypt, 70% of students of age 13-15 have been subject to bullying by peers. The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) supported by UNICEF in partnership with Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MOETE) in Egypt and funded by the EU, planned to launch a multimedia mass communication national campaign #ImAgainstBullying to increase social awareness on peer violence and bullying; with the aim of sensitizing children and adolescents on the problem, providing empowering alternatives to ultimately reduce the acceptance of peer violence, enhance demand of child protection services and leading coordinated Ending Violence Against Children (EVAC) efforts in Egypt at different levels under the EVAC advocacy brand ‘Awladna’. The campaign was linked to the National Child Helpline 16000 as a referral mechanism for children, parents and caregivers seeking expert support.

Describe the creative idea.

Through this campaign we wanted to localize the concept of bullying through raising awareness against it, naming it in our own language and establishing it as an unacceptable and shameful behavior. Emphasizing on the fact that bullying does not have a grey area, its either black or white; its either bullying or not. There is no such thing as “child’s play”. Bassem a 13-year-old student finding himself in the middle of the bullying circle surrounded by bullies, bystanders and kids who are against bullying. In each copy we see the circle from a different perspective; from the Teacher's, the Family's and Bassem's perspectives. It was also very important to reveal a positive call to action in all the copies to motivate audience to take an action!

Describe the strategy.

The campaign main target audiences are children and adolescents, ages 7 to 18 as being the age most vulnerable to peer violence; and the influencers being parents, caregivers and teachers. For the conceptualization of this issue, 24 focus groups and in-depth interviews have been carried out with children between 7&18 years old, covering 4 major cities in Egypt. We also tested the copies and got more inspired with their real life experience that has been reflected in the final product. The campaign design allowed the target audience to interact online (through Facebook and Instagram) and offline (through on-ground activations and events) in providing practical inputs to deal with peer violence; to prevent and respond to it at community level during and beyond the period of the mass media campaign through a positive narrative approach.

Describe the execution.

Before and during the creative process research and focus groups were set to make sure we are going in the right direction. In January 2018 we locked the creative output and directly proceeded with the shoot preparations and shot the Ads in Feb 2018. We casted hundreds of children for the main roles to find our main actors, scouted different schools around Egypt to choose our main location, designed the home at the school as a set so we don’t have to move to another location. The campaign included 3 TVCs, 1 infographics video, 3 online testimonies. In September 2018, It was broadcasted through TV, Radio, digital platforms, outdoor billboards as well as on-ground activities on a national scale. In its design phase, the campaign capitalized on UNICEF Egypt’s Ambassadors Actor Ahmed Helmy and Actress Mona Zaki who acted as faces and voices of the campaign.

List the results.

The target of the campaign was a reach of 80 million, which was surpassed to more than 97 million users on UNICEF digital platforms, with more than 4.4 million actively engaged with the campaign. The campaign videos reached more than 21.3 million views. The huge amount of online interactions with the campaign by children, teachers, parents and caregivers indicate that these audiences related to the campaign and were encouraged to speak up about bullying. Most importantly, we witnessed a smooth and natural rise of using the term “Tanamor” (the Arabic translation of bullying) across social media platforms, online and broadcast media. The National Child Helpline saw a surge in the average number of calls to 65,000 calls compared to the average 10,000 during the same period last year. Egyptian celebrities voiced their personal stories and stance against bullying in a video contribution.