Cannes Lions
OPTIMIST, Tallinn / ESTONIAN SEXUAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION / 2022
Awards:
Overview
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Credits
Background
In Estonia, the legal age of sexual consent is only 14. At 14, a child is too young to understand the dangers that come with sexual consent. Every year, 14-year-old children get sexually abused because of this law and yet, all previous attempts to change it have failed. There is no consensus among political parties and lawmakers on this topic. Neither is there any public pressure on them to take action. Problem is, people think 14 is OK. Comments like ‘she knew exactly what she was doing’, ‘she wanted it’ or ‘she must have led him on' weren’t uncommon. Our goal was to protect 14-year-old children from sexual abuse by changing the public mindset and raising public pressure on politicians and lawmakers to increase the legal age of sexual consent.
Idea
To make people realise why 14 is too young, we wanted to show what a 'consensual relationship' between a 14-year-old child and an older adult actually looks like. Then people would instantly see that at 14, a boy or girl is just a child and how easy it is for the older adult to manipulate this child. But if we staged the relationship using actors and people knew it was a campaign, the impact would not be the same. So we created a horrifying relationship between 14-year-old Piia Heivdal and 54-year-old Kristo Terrandi, but made it look like a typical tabloid-style news interview, so people would believe it's a real child in the most dangerous situation right now because of the law. Only at the end of the story, we revealed it's a campaign and gave people a hashtag for speaking out against the law and raising pressure on lawmakers.
Strategy
For years, conventional PR approaches like articles and interviews by opinion leaders and activists had failed to move the public and lawmakers. The reason for this public apathy is an underlying misconception that a 14-year-old is fully capable of giving sexual consent to an older adult. Upon analysing horrifying news reports around this topic from the last 5 years, we found that these reports never showed the 14-year-old victim, or published photos of the 14-year-old victim together with the abuser. Our strategy was to show the public a 14-year-old in a 'consensual relationship' with a much older adult, so people would instantly see that at 14, a girl or boy is just a child and realise how easily this child can be manipulated by an older adult. To convert public awareness to public pressure on lawmakers, we coined a simple slogan that said it all ''14 is not OK''.
Execution
On one of Estonia's leading online news portals, we published a tabloid-style interview featuring 14-year-old Piia Heivdal and 54-year-old Kristo Terrandi where they talk about their consensual relationship and how normal it is. The characters were fictional, but we carefully crafted the text and photos in a way that would make people believe they were real. Just as planned, people continued reading in horror thinking it was a real child in the most dangerous situation because of the law. Only at the end, when people realised it was a campaign, they also realised in the most impactful way how dangerous this law is. To convert public awareness and outrage into public action and political pressure, we gave people the hashtag #14isnotOK
Outcome
Within 24 hours, the story and photos of 14-year-old Piia and 54-year-old Kristo went viral. The campaign sparked a nationwide movement where people raised their voice against the law to say ''14 is not OK'' across digital platforms. Influencers and victims who had been sexually abused at 14 shared their stories using #14isnotOK. Despite a campaign budget of just €5000, the campaign crossed
1 million+ impressions in a country of 1.4 million people. Story read 204,000+ times, making it the 10th most-read story in the news portal. Images clicked 300,000+ times. 25000+ comments and reactions. But most importantly, the Ministry of Justice introduced a new bill to raise the legal age of sexual consent to 16. The bill was drafted in collaboration with Estonian Sexual Health Association. On 1st June, 2022, the bill will become the law. 14 will no longer be OK in our law, or in our society.
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