Bully Ads for The Canadian Safe Schools Network

Why we bullied influencers into talking about bullying

Speech bubble saying "@&!$#"
The Canadian Safe School Network logo.

By hijacking digital ad space, we inundated our victims with insults in order to raise awareness for The Canadian Safe Schools Network's anti-bullying after school programs.

Service

Launching campaigns

Industry

Education
Not-for-profit
Charity

Output

Microsite
Retargeted ads
Email campaign

Timeline

3 months

51%

Email open rate towering over the global average by 143%

14%

Click-through rate 13,900% of the global average, despite having no explanation, brand or resolve

23 million

Impressions in a country of 35 million people

60

Unique ad concepts per victim on any given day
The Webby Awards logo.
The ANA International Echo Awards logo.
The Media Innovation Awards logo.
The Canadian Marketing Association logo.
The Epica Awards logo.
The Atomic Awards logo.
The Cannes Lions logo.
The Promo Awards 2015 logo.
The Internationalist Awards For Innovation Digital Solutions 2017 logo.
The Festival of Media Global Awards logo.
The Advertising & Design Club of Canada logo.
Strategy's Shopper Innovation Awards logo.

The challenge

Raise awareness for The Canadian Safe Schools Network’s anti-bullying after school programs and stand out amongst a sea of similar causes.

Our approach

In many ways, digital banner ads behave like a cyberbully. The same ads relentlessly hound you everywhere you go, and it often feels like there’s no escaping.
We harnessed the overwhelming vigor of 1:1 retargeting and crafted Bully Ads to catch influencers off guard to emulate the cyberbullying experience. Once the purpose of Bully Ads was revealed, they would then share their experience and amplify our cause online.

The outcome

Our approach was both unconventional and an industry first: we took mass programmatic ad banners and efficiently put them to work on a one-to-one marketing level. We circumvented ad policies. We had no source or brand. We simply bullied our target for days with no explanation.

As a result, The Canadian Safe Schools Network received an overwhelming amount of kindness in the form of donations.

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