In Real Life
Monica Lewinsky
Issue 46 | March 2018
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Creative Chief Creative Officer BBDO Worldwide David Lubars Chief Creative Officer BBDO New York Greg Hahn Executive Creative Director Danilo Boer, Marcos Kotlhar Associate Creative Director Art Director Bianca Guimaraes Associate Creative Director Copywriter Roberto Danino
Production Team
Production Agency Producer Director of Integrated Production David Rolfe Executive Producer Angela Narloch Director of Music Rani Vaz Production Company BBDO Studios Director Win Bates Executive Producer Persis Koch BBDO Studios Lead Michael Gentile BBDO Studios Manager AJ Rowe In the video, the abusers and the victim were all actors but the people who came to their help were not. The nasty things said by the bullies were all taken verbatim from online posts.
Other Credits
Other Planning & Account Team Christina Stoddard, Dexter Blumenthal, Yin Chung, James Mullaly, Steven Panariello, Lindsey Cash, Carrie White, Nora Stanton Influencer Manager Lucy Bennet Editorial Editorial Company Work Editorial Editor Adam Witten Producer Jamie Perritt Music & Sound Music Company Human Composer & Creative Lead Andy Bloch Sound Mixer Heard City, Dan Flosdorf Executive Producer Gloria Pitagorsky, James Dean Wells Post-Production Colorist Fergus McCall Post-Production Company The Mill Producer Luis Martin 2D Assists Kyle Zemborain 3D Lead Corey Brown
Date
October 2017
Background
Monica Lewinsky was at the heart of a White House scandal in 1996 when President Clinton admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with her.
In 2014 she emerged as a spokesperson against cyberbullying, from which she had been a victim herself.
"Having survived myself," she said to Forbes Magazine, "I want to help other victims of the shame game survive too."
What she had learned was that she rarely received hurtful remarks to her face.
However, a culture of cruelty had become the new normal online.
As a result, 47% of Americans have experienced some form of online abuse.
The challenge was to try to raise awareness of the issue and change behaviour.
Idea
A social experiment was created, where actors re-enacted online bullying scenarios on the street. The scenarios were based on hateful comments written by real people on social media. Every time a hateful scenario was replayed, there was always a stranger to step in to defend the person being bullied. The PSA urged people to rethink their actions online and to #ClickWithCompassion.
Results
The video kicked off National Bullying Prevention Month and within a month it had been viewed over 23 million times. The film trended on YouTube, and searches for "cyberbullying" increased by 215% during the launch week.
The campaign generated over one billion media impressions. It was featured in the NY Times, CBS, The Guardian, Dr. Oz Show, Huffington Post, Le Figaro, etc. and was shared by celebrities, including J.K. Rowling, Sarah Silverman, Questlove, Katie Couric, Jeremy Clarkson, Jim Gaffigan, Ronnie Wood, Emmy Rossum, Jemima Goldsmith and Neil Gaiman. More significantly, schools have started using the film as a tool to educate students.
Our Thoughts
Monica Lewinsky was the first ordinary person to become a focus of attention on the internet. If you type her name into Google, it comes up with 2.7 million links. That cannot have been easy. Even now, though she is clearly trying to turn her experiences to some good, there are posts doubting her motives and suggesting that she is simply trying to build her own brand. The comments have been disabled on YouTube. I came across one post, doubting her sincerity: "This is a woman who has made $12 million from an affair."
Anonymous, of course. Precisely the sort of smear she is trying to combat with the help of some very clever people at BBDO. Good luck to them all.