Cannes Lions

SOCIAL BULLETS

AREA 23, AN IPG HEALTH NETWORK COMPANY, New York / STAND FOR THE SILENT/KAZOO / 2022

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Overview

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Overview

Background

Kazoo is a personal safety app developed to help families build a safer social media environment. It is in beta phase for a Q3 launch, available to investors, school administrators, and parent influencers. To build awareness of the problem and a list of qualified leads for launch, Kazoo partnered with Stand for the Silent, a non-profit that fights all forms of bullying since 2010.

The goal was to get parents to understand the danger their kids experience on social media. Research shows that bullying is the leading cause of teenage suicide in America, and that half of this abuse happens online.

Together, Stand for the Silent and Kazoo decided to create a powerful anti-bullying message while generating qualified leads with concerned parents.

Idea

Social Bullets is an experiment created to replicate 24 hours in American students' lives on social media, to show parents the dangers of the internet. Research revealed that for every 233 bullying posts online, one teenager attempts suicide. To illustrate this staggering number to parents, we developed an AI algorithm to track bullying posts and fire real bullets in real time to reflect the statistical occurrence of suicide attempts by teens.

Strategy

In 24 hours, our algorithm detected more than 70,000 bullying posts on 4 major social media platforms. Statistically this represents 300 suicide attempts in one day.

Stand for the Silent presented parents with this tragic reality in virtual educational sessions to build awareness on cyberbullying. These sessions also generated leads for the upcoming launch of Stand for the Silent’s main partner, the Kazoo App, a platform to keep people safe on the internet.

Execution

We transformed a shooting range into a representation of social media. On one end was the dark anonymous hole of the internet. On the other end were posters representing real-life targets of hate –teenagers who were victims of the 4 most common forms of cyberbullying: culture shaming, body shaming, sex shaming, and grade shaming.

Our algorithm controlled the shooting range. For every 233 bullying posts it detected, the range fired a bullet into a specific poster, representing one attempted suicide, statistically speaking.

We held special presentations in virtual learning sessions held through local PTA meetings to show the experiment to parents.

These educational sessions via Zoom were hosted by Kirk Smalley, president of Stand for the Silent. He was joined by cyberbullying survivors who shared their own experience to help equip parents to navigate this online world.

Outcome

The pandemic brought Stand for the Silent in-person school sessions to a halt. Thanks to Social Bullets and its virtual educational sessions, Stand for the Silent was able to resume its activities and re-engage parents to their cause.

Kazoo gained 2000 qualified leads to be activated upon app launch.

Dozens of parents have signed up for an early access trial, to serve as brand ambassadors in their own communities.

Social Bullets has also helped Kazoo and Stand for the Silent raise awareness and open parents’ eyes to the growing danger of online bullying and its deadly consequences.

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2022, STAND FOR THE SILENT/KAZOO

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