Rimmel London has a clear purpose to inspire people to experiment & express themselves, without fear of judgment. What they were seeing with the rise of social media and on their own platforms was an increasing amount of negativity and criticism towards how people look and express themselves.

Wanting to understand the scale of the issue they commissioned research across 10 countries, talking to over 11,000 women aged 16-25. The resulting white paper ‘Beauty Cyberbullying - Expression Repression’ highlighted the scale of the problem. 1 in 4 women have experienced Beauty Cyber Bullying and they project that 115m images are deleted as a result, each year.

Using this insight and working in partnership with Rimmel the #IWILLNOTBEDELETED campaign was born. Its aim to tackle the societal issues that stop people of all ages from feeling able to fully express themselves on social media due to a fear of negative comments.

115 million images are deleted from social media every year, because of the comments or judgments that others have posted against them. The impact of this behaviour reaches beyond the screen. Now was the time to give it a voice. We worked with people who had experienced beauty cyberbullying and gave them their voices back. With a powerful, bold message of empowerment:

“I will Not Be Deleted”

Our hero film featured fourteen people from around the world who had experienced beauty cyber bullying; beauty influencer Tess Daly, who lost the use of her right hand but now uses make-up as her creative outlet, and Ascia, an American-Kuwaiti entrepreneur, who is often bullied for breaking cultural beauty norms. With the help of British Soul/R&B artists Ray BLK, we captured their stories in powerful and emotive beat poetry inspired lyrics.

The rise of social media has seen an increase in negativity online which manifests itself as beauty cyberbullying. Having seen the results from the White Paper research we projected that 115 Million images were being deleted from social media each year. It was critical that the campaign and content developed was activated and amplified across Social channels reinforcing the campaign message and helping to change behaviour

Through the Rimmel Global platforms and network of influencers, consumers, employees and partners we wanted to raise awareness of the issue and how serious it has become.

More importantly we hoped that our campaign helped those experiencing beauty cyberbullying realise they are not alone, and there is help available.

By sharing the campaign film, individual stories and partnering with The Cybersmile Foundation our aim was to spark a conversation, raise awareness of beauty cyberbullying and help The Cybersmile Foundation reach more people.

The campaign took a year from brief to creative deployment - encompassing the white paper study, creative concepting and production.

Announced to Global Media at an event in London with our cast & ambassadors and launching in line with UK anti bullying week in November 2018 gave us a prime cultural moment to generate conversation around the issue.

The campaign ran for several weeks to coincide with anti-bullying week, across 10 countries with re-support in the months to follow.

Our content was vast - a hero film, three group discussions, a series of moving portraits of our fourteen cast members and independent story content highlighting our cast’s own beauty cyber-bullying stories. This was housed within a bespoke campaign hub that also contained the full white paper and details around Cybersmile x Rimmel London’s initiative to help stop Cyberbullying, as well as support from brand ambassadors Rita Ora and Cara Delevingne.

With our ambassadors Rita Ora and Cara Delevingne, global influencers and inspiring cast we saw national and international press coverage in outlets such as BBC, Marie Claire, NY Times to name a few, as well as industry press.

Overall the campaign smashed all KPIs, reaching over 22m people globally. We achieved a total $4.5m Earned Media Value and impacted over 6m people on Instagram, which saw much of the beauty bullying taking place. 2.5m people engaged with our message, over 7m video views and 81,000 campaign hub page views. In addition we made a lasting, real world difference through the online AI tool we developed with Cybersmile to support those affected by cyberbullying which helped 6,000 people in the first month alone

Amplification through local influencers inspired thousands of victims to stand up against censorship and express themselves and share their personal stories resulting in over 5000 posts on #iwillnotbedeleted.