Fraudsters have been around for centuries, and their tactics have morphed along with cultural and technological advances. Although social media scams may look, feel and sound different, they are still driven by the same old thing—deception. Thus, we decided to frame these scams as familiar, old tales with a new twist and remind our target audience of the strength of an old adage in today’s social media world: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Our target audience is very familiar with the storylines of Snow White and Frankenstein, so we used them as the foundation for our campaign. Using fictional characters as victims instead of real people allowed us to educate without being patronizing or portraying our audience negatively. Furthermore, seeing legendary characters with modern technology added a humorous, memorable twist to our vigilance message.

Given the primary objective of awareness and engagement, we implemented the campaign using the Facebook reach and frequency buying methodology to ensure optimal frequency and guaranteed reach of the message. Starting with the high-impact Canvas ad, we sequentially targeted the carousel and click-to-website units to drive storytelling and landing page traffic.

Snow White

Buy length: Sept. 9-Oct. 7, 2017

Frankenstein

Buy length: Oct. 9-Nov. 7, 2017

The campaign reached more than 18 million users, which equates to 37% of the total 45+ audience on Facebook, with an average frequency of 5.81x. In terms of engagement, the average view time for the Canvas ad was 15 seconds, and the carousel ads drove 1.4 million video completions. Finally, the campaign generated 1,136 shares, 6,317 reactions, and 569 comments while also acquiring a new and engaged audience through 5,604 page likes.

We raised awareness about social media scams, ultimately positioning the Fraud Watch Network as an advocate for consumer empowerment.