“Bullying” is an outdated term: teens are consistently exposed to a general culture of meanness that they experience daily but might not recognize or define as “bullying.” While it is common to label those who contribute to bullying as “bullies,” teens who mistreat their peers can also be the victims of cruelty. Looking at this changing cultural landscape, the Ad Council wanted to reinvigorate their existing anti-bullying initiative and talk to teens in a fresh way.

To talk about bullying in a fresh way, we created an integrated campaign titled “Because Of You” with the goal of championing kindness, and showing, not telling, teens the impact on each other’s lives.

Teens are looking towards their future, hopeful and focused on tomorrow. But, teens don’t always see that they are actually creating today the person that they will be tomorrow. This is being shaped now. How might we help teens realize their impact today—what they are shaping with every action and every moment?

The strategy for the campaign was really based on self reflection. In addition it does appeal to the teens own selfish motivation for improving behavior. How do they want to be perceived by their peers? As someone kind/caring or as someone mean spirited and hurtful? From the conversations we have in person to the comments we leave online, we always have the choice to decide which impact we want to make. Throughout its different executions and touch points, Because Of You wanted to remind teens of the power their actions have.

The campaign hero pieces were two videos that featured stories of real teens (not actors) told in their own words: a PSA titled, “Because of You,” highlighting both the teens and four social influencers sharing the positive and negative impact their peers had on their lives, and “Honest Yearbook,” an experiment that leveraged a real high school yearbook photo shoot to capture the reactions of teenagers watching unexpected testimonial videos from their friends expressing the influence they’ve gained from them.

The content was turned into broadcast, digital, social, print and OOH executions. Teens were driven to learn more at www.becauseofyou.org where a variety of resources were available.

The campaign garnered more than 160MM earned media impressions in the first month of launch and had 6MM video views, outperforming previous anti-bullying efforts from the Ad Council.