Facebook today is much more than a social network. Rather, it's the world’s most popular source of entertainment and inspirational content. As CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said, "We want more than a single feed of content. We want to give everyone in the world the best newspaper we can. It should have high-quality public content and socially relevant content, and it should drill into any topic."

However, Facebook is a notoriously regulated platform, making it very difficult to work with branded content. As expressed in Facebook's own policy, “Ads linking to Facebook branded content (including Pages, groups, events or Connect sites) may make limited reference to "Facebook" in ad text for the purpose of clarifying the destination of the ad. All other ads and landing pages may not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall) or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines or with our prior written permission. Thus, before launching the campaign we made sure we got written permission to implement the idea from Facebook. The application was live for 12 hours, before being shut down by Facebook.

In Sweden, 1/3 of all teens say they have been bullied online. Friends' vision is to see young children and adolescents grow up in a safe and secure society where all are treated equally.

A digital campaign rotating around powerful Facebook content is therefore extremely relevant. We’re dramatizing the problem in the lion's den, the arena where the problem thrives.

We wanted to expose parents and adults to the world of online bullying. A teen world that most often is closed for them. We wanted them to take action, learn more about how to detect and fight bullying, donate money and put the topic on the agenda.

We also wanted to send a message to the large social media corporations: Do you want to continue giving your silent approval to bullying by not acting or do you want to take a stand against it?

The Bullying Simulator was launched on Facebook on 10-10-2012. It spread like wildfire on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Less than 24 hours later it was pulled due to ”violations of Facebook guidelines”. During its short life online, tens of thousands experienced what it feels like to have their friends turning against them, their timelines filled with hatred and their Facebook photos taunted with degrading comments.

The Bullying Simulator was stopped but the campaign wasn’t.

The application was approved by Facebook in advance. But just in case the application was pulled, we had prepared a PR-strategy including an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, asking him why Facebook stopped The Bullying Simulator and not bullying. This letter was published in leading Swedish newspapers, was referred to in even more and spread rapidly on blogs and social media. Moreover it made Facebook react and fly in top executives to work with Friends on how to fight online bullying.

The campaign was completely user driven and the spread of the campaign relied totally on the content being interesting and urgent enough to share. Since the topic and design of the campaign was controversial we earned lots of media, which of course worked in the favor of the campaign.

1. The campaign gave thousands of people a first hand experience of what it feels like to be bullied. The importance of this can't be underrated.

2. It put online bullying and bullying in general on the Swedish agenda.

3. During its short period online, only 10 hours, more than 10,000 people tried the application. Friends registered the highest amount of Facebook Likes ever. Moreover, thousands and thousands of share posts, likes and Tweets were sent.

4. The big achievement of this campaign however, is that it provoked action from Facebook. A small budget digital campaign for small Swedish anti-bullying organization Friends rocked the giant social media corporation. This means that communication works. It’s powerful and it can alter structures that might seem permanent. This also means no one is too small to make a difference. If you want to change something, you can. And that, if anything, gives hope of a better world.