To make teens understand the real consequences of bullying we had to use their favourite language in social media: GIFs. GIFs repeat over and over, unlike bullying, which gets worse and worse with every repetition. Therefore, we developed the “Escalating GIFs”, where the shown bullying action gets worse with every repetition. To be as authentic as possible, we shot the GIFs without actors, but real victims of bullying. Escalating GIFs were seeded exactly where teens are looking for entertaining GIFs. They linked to websites and helplines across Europe to empower victims and bystanders.

The campaign was launched on the 6th of March, the Anti-Bullying Day in Greece on a national and pan-European level with an ongoing seeding of GIFs on different teen relevant channels. The roll-out in other countries followed and still is.

The GIFs were seeded exactly where teens are looking for entertainment – on platforms, which are well-known homes of GIFs like Giphy, 9gag, Imgur and others.

Locally adapted for one of the 17 partnering NGOs of the European Anti-Bullying Network (EAN) the GIFs were posted additionally on several national social media pages with a focus on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The main flight of the campaign supported by PR on a European level took place from March 6th until April 15th.

Within six weeks, the campaign was seen by 4.5 million teens. More than 120,000 engaged with the GIFs, liked, commented or shared them. Even Monica Lewinsky, the most famous anti-bullying activist, tweeted one of the GIFs. Some posts were shared more than 4,000 times.

Via earned media another 10 million people were reached, adding an equivalent value of 220,000 Euros. All this without a single Cent spent on media, just with a few GIFs.