The situation:

In Estonia, the legal age of sexual consent is only 14. At 14, a child is too young to understand the dangers that come with sexual consent. Every year, 14-year-old children get sexually abused because of this law, and yet, every attempt to change the law has failed. There is no consensus among political parties and key decision makers on this topic. Neither is there any public pressure on them to take action, because people think 14 is OK.

The brief:

We had to protect 14-year-old children from sexual abuse by raising the legal age of sexual content.

Key objectives:

We had to get people to realise how dangerous this law is, so they would publicly raise their voice in support of changing the law. This in turn would raise the pressure on politicians and lawmakers to take immediate steps to increase the legal age of sexual consent.

We released a horrifying story about the ‘consensual relationship’ between 14-year-old Piia Heivdal and 54-year-old Kristo Terrandi. The story was fictional, but we crafted it like a typical tabloid style news report and released it on one of Estonia’s leading online news portals that is known for sensational news. The story also featured a realistic image gallery that showcased and normalised their intimate relationship.

As planned, people completely missed the tiny 'content marketing' sign and continued reading in horror thinking it was a real story about a real child!

By the time readers realised this was actually a campaign, they would have also realised in the most impactful way, why 14 is too young.

So at the end of the story, we gave people a Call-to-Action to help change the law and we introduced the hashtag #14isnotOK to enable people to raise their voice together.

At the core of our PR strategy was the shocking story about the dangerous relationship between 14-year-old Piia Heivdal and 54-year-old Kristo Terrandi. If people could just see what a ´consensual relationship' between a 14-year-old child and an older adult actually looks like, they would immediately realise why 14 is too young.

At the end of the story we gave people the hashtag #14isnotOK, to trigger a nationwide movement to change the law, where the public and the influencers could raise their voice together in a way that was connected and synchronised.

We created and distributed the story, photos and the hashtag to influencers, celebrities, opinion leaders, activists and to radio, TV and news channels. We also collaborated with them to co-create interviews and articles to turn '14 is not OK' into the common voice of people.

The campaign was targeted to the public, which in turn would influence politicians.

Initially, two of Estonia's biggest news publishers refused to release our story. On 17th March, we finally managed to release the story of 14-year-old Piia and 54-year-old Kristo via a content marketing space on one of Estonia’s leading online news portals which is known for publishing sensational news.

Because our media budget was only €2000, organic virality and earned media was critical for us to succeed.

We made the story so moving that people would want to share it. When people shared it, we made the shared article's thumbnail image and text so impactful, that others would click on it. We also featured an image gallery in the story so the photos themselves could go viral on photo-based platforms like Instagram.

At the end of the story, we added the hashtag #14isnotOK to drive people to use it and put pressure on lawmakers, thus turning people into campaign ambassadors.

Within 24 hours, the story and photos of 14-year-old Piia and 54-year-old Kristo went viral. The campaign sparked a nationwide movement where the public and influencers raised their voice to say ''14 is not OK''. Victims who had been sexually abused at 14 began sharing their stories using #14isnotOK. Estonia's top TV and radio channels started conversations around why 14 is not OK.

Despite a campaign budget of just €5000, the campaign crossed 1 million+ impressions in a country of 1.4 million people. The story also became the 10th most-read story in the history of the news portal.

Comments and reactions: 25,000+

Audience engagements: 160,000+

Organic traffic to the story: 200,000+

Images clicked: 300,000+ times

The most important result of all was that politicians and lawmakers immediately responded by introducing a bill to raise the legal age of sexual consent to 16.

14 will no longer be OK in Estonia.