Online Sexual Exploitation

Our “Online Sexual Exploitation” campaign has received extensive press coverage during this last week including stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.  The news was a multimillion dollar commitment of donated media for the campaign from News Corp.  They will be supporting the campaign in the popular teen site, MySpace.com and on Fox broadcast and cable channels.  We couldn’t be more delighted by this commitment from our long time supporters at News Corp.

Although much of the coverage implied that this is a new campaign from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Ad Council, this campaign was originally launched in 2004 with a parent targeted effort.  That campaign and the teen target public service ads that launched June of 2005 (which News Corp is supporting), have already earned $83 million in donated media.

The first round of work (monitor and acronym) alerted parents to the fact that one in five children are sexually solicited online – and only one in four tell their parents.  It sent parents to www.cybertipline.com to learn more about their children’s online experience and ways to protect them.  The talented team at Merkley and Partners has created breakthrough, compelling work for this critical issue.  The second round that launched last year targets teens, particularly girls, who think it’s perfectly fine to give out personal information and develop a relationship online with older men.  This powerful work (Exchange) dramatically shows naïve young teens that while they think they are developing a meaningful relationship, they are being “played” by predators. Another spot (Evidence Bag) trades on the popularity of TV dramas that involve crime scene investigators to convey the possibility that meeting someone they meet online in real life could make them the victim of a crime.

Of course, in addition to the television, this work is available for radio, print and internet.  And I’m happy to report that it is being heavily supported in all these media platform.  Why?  The issue is critical as we see in the news seemingly everyday.  And when we see the powerful creative “Monitor” and “Exchange”, we feel the overwhelming desire to punch these creeps.  It’s no wonder our media partners jump at the opportunity to do something to protect these vulnerable kids from the despicable predators.  We know once the public sees the work, they will be moved to act.