Over $429 million was reported lost due to gift card scams since 2018, and the 2021 holiday season was expected to be the worst year yet for this crime. Scammers have gotten increasingly sophisticated and complex to increase their effectiveness.

Our client, an online scam resource platform that highlights the latest scams, launched a multi-month creative campaign to spark intergenerational conversations and warn as many people as possible about the prevalence of gift card scams before the holidays – a time when scammers hit the hardest.

Our company was tasked with leading the earned media and influencer portion of the campaign to spark authentic conversation and increase awareness around gift card scams, help combat the stigma around falling for a scam, and educate people on how to spot a scam in order to prevent falling for one.

The creative agency devised a series of dramatized videos featuring the key demographic of those who are common targets for scams. The videos’ scenarios also centered around the most common gift card scam scenarios: you owe the government money, your boss wants you to buy gift cards for the office, your computer has been hacked, you’ve been pre-approved for a loan, or your grandchild is in jail and you need to bail them out. The films remind people that “If someone asks for gift cards to solve a problem, it’s a scam” and points them to our client’s website to educate viewers on tips to prevent themselves from getting scammed.

The videos were also created to help remove the stigma around gift card scams because, although scams affect everyone in some way, they are largely underreported and rarely talked about due to feelings of embarrassment or shame.

We devised an influencer strategy primarily for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to maintain consistent conversations around gift card scams throughout the duration of the campaign from Nov. 15 - Dec. 23, 2021. Our target audience was Boomers – the top target for scammers – and Millennials – the tech-savvy children or grandchildren who could help educate their loved ones. Our goal was to get the target audiences to understand that “if someone asks for gift cards to solve a problem, it’s a scam.”

We aimed to target a broad range of influencers to maximize our reach. We identified influencers of varying follower sizes and audience reach – between 50,000 - 9,500,000 – to capture both general public and niche audiences. We prioritized diversity in our influencer recruiting and identified accounts across a range of genres including sports, TV personalities, parenting, general lifestyle, and influencer-famous accounts in order to

In the weeks leading up to the campaign, we worked on recruiting boomer and millennial influencers in the worlds of sports, family and parenting, television, and lifestyle. We tasked our influencers with devising one of three types of posts: Telling an authentic story of a time they, or someone they loved experienced a scam; talking about a loved one they would never want to get scammed; or sharing key statistics and information about gift card scams.

We scheduled influencers to post weekly across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and in some cases, TikTok, between Nov. 15-Dec. 23, 2021 to maintain the conversation throughout the entirety of the campaign. For each post, we required influencers to direct followers to our client’s website where people could learn more about how to avoid scams. We also asked influencers to encourage followers to share their stories to help reduce the stigma around scams.

We secured 27 influencers, ranging in reach from 50,000 to 9,500,000. 100 posts went live on Instagram grid, stories, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok between Nov. 15 - Dec. 23. This included well-known individuals like former NFL player Deion Sanders, sportscasters Erin Andrews and Joy Taylor, Dancing with the Stars’ Witney Carson, and influencer-famous accounts including BaddieWinkle, The Old Gays, Corporate Natalie, and more. We surpassed our target total potential reach of 50 million, achieving 54.5 million followers. The posts received 2.6 million total engagements and 878,000 video views.

The influencers sparked meaningful, judgement-free conversation in their comments section, achieving our goal to create conversation, remove shame and stigma, and educate our target audience. Followers shared their personal scam stories, supported others, spoke of overcoming shame, and educated others on what they learned from personal experience.