Cannes Lions

'me too.' Act Too

FCB/SIX, Toronto / ME TOO. / 2021

Case Film
Supporting Images
Supporting Images

Overview

Entries

Credits

Overview

Background

Sexual violence is a tool of oppression that disproportionately affects women. This issue becomes even more nuanced when looking through the lens of class, race, and sexual identity. A key ambition of the ‘me too.’ Movement is to connect would-be activists with local, grassroots organizations — often the most effective at providing inclusive support to diverse people and communities.

It can be difficult to understand the patchwork structure of these organizations and how one might get involved. The near-paralyzing scale of this issue can make it hard to feel like individual contributions make an impact.

To address this, the ‘me too.’ Movement sought to follow the virality of #metoo with a broader invitation to participate, focusing on three key business objectives:

VISIBILITY — Elevate the work of local, grassroots organizations

ACCESSIBILITY — Connect everyday people with impactful actions they can take

TANGIBILITY — Give the community a measure of progress

Idea

INSIGHT

When a civil rights movement is perpetually silenced, people can’t know how to actively be part of the solution.

INTRODUCING ACT TOO

The first recommendation engine for activism to end sexual violence – and a blockchain-powered archive that preserves it.

YOUR NEXT ACT

Regardless of your experience or time, Act Too helps you find a way to participate in ‘me too.’. If you’re a busy parent, Act Too can guide you to resources for talking to children about consent. Or, if you’re a student it can help direct you to start a campus support group. And, the more you act, the smarter it gets.

OUR RECORDED HISTORY

Activism deserves to be elevated and preserved. We’ve protected actions from erasure by writing them to a permanent blockchain ledger. We also used them to visualize the storied history of this fight, building a monument to the movement itself.

Strategy

COMPILING A DATABASE OF ACTIONS TO END SEXUAL VIOLENCE

We started by building a grassroots database of actions from organizations that included commonplace ways to help: volunteering, donating, etc. Our natural language processing engine identified and extracted the metadata from these actions. Then, it scrubbed search, social, and e-commerce platforms to find hundreds more. Some were closely related actions, but many more were unexpected - like reading a memoir or shutting down rape jokes. Finally, this vast array of actions were tagged by topic, interest, and involvement type to help fuel our recommendations.

BUILDING A PERMANENT ARCHIVE OF FOR ACTIVISM

To ensure this work can never be silenced, altered, or erased, our platform writes each completed act to a permanent, decentralized, peer-to-peer network - the Ethereum blockchain. So, present day activism encodes the past, while sending an immutable signal of this work as a beacon to the future.

Execution

ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALLIES

Unlike climate change, where impactful action is seemingly everywhere, actions to end sexual violence are less obvious. Our data acquisition strategy seeks to broaden the spectrum of activism beyond the prevailing understanding of what constitutes an action. Our utility applies e-commerce principles, presenting this expansive data back to our audience in a familiar, intuitive, and personalized manner. The end result is a more accessible, inclusive entry point to the movement.

PRESERVATION FOR ACTIVISTS

The history of this movement has been systemically silenced, altered, and erased. It’s why we know Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat, but not for her work as a sexual violence investigator. In response, our platform writes each completed action to a permanent, decentralized, peer-to-peer network—the Ethereum blockchain. So, present day activism encodes the past, while sending an immutable signal of this work as a beacon to the future.

CROWD-SOURCING GRASSROOTS DATA

We started by building a grassroots database of actions from organizations that included commonplace ways to help: volunteering, donating, etc. Our natural language processing engine identified and extracted the metadata from these actions. Then, it scrubbed search, social, and e-commerce platforms to find hundreds more. Some were closely related actions, but many more were unexpected - like reading a memoir or shutting down rape jokes. Finally, this vast array of actions were tagged by topic, interest, and involvement type to help fuel our recommendations.

DECENTRALIZING THE HISTORICAL RECORD

History is written by the oppressor. To fight the systemic erasure of this movement’s progress, we used the decentralized, peer-to-peer nature of blockchain to archive every action facilitated by our utility to a permanent digital record. Every action’s unique 64 character blockchain ID also becomes part of our digital monument - a mosaic of murals celebrating the movement’s famous forbearers.

Outcome

BUILDING A NEW NARRATIVE

Act Too launched on the third anniversary of the viral hashtag, garnering immediate global press and conversation. The campaign generated 1.6B impressions, reaching 48 American states and 71 countries in the first 48 hours. The work received praise from politicians such as Ayanna Presley, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts’s 7th congressional district, celebrities such as Alyssa Milano, Gabrielle Union, & Mira Sorvino, and even global leaders such as Melinda Gates.

THE END OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH THIS NEXT ACT

To date, the utility has recorded over 54,168 actions to the blockchain, immortalizing thousands of acts in the fight to end sexual violence.

• 12,169 Learned

• 12,812 Volunteered

• 7,730 Attended Events

• 3,899 Made Donations

Already we’ve completed the murals of 33 historic moments, immortalizing thousands of acts in the fight to end sexual violence.