Most Australians still don’t know what sexual consent is*. While new, progressive consent laws had swept the nation, our everyday understanding of sexual consent had not progressed. Government educational ads had been widely criticized. Not-for-profit group Consent Labs had tried to bridge the gap through workshops, but we needed a fresh approach in order to make a cultural impact.

We realised that Australians collectively watch over 780,000,000 hours of films a year - a form of entertainment, but also a vehicle to influence cultural norms.

And academics have shown the capacity of films to impact real-world behaviour by depicting antisocial acts as trivial, acceptable and even desirable.**

We wanted to empower Australians to recognise non-consensual acts on a mass scale - but without a traditional, top-down approach.

* 65% of Australians can’t define consent (Pureprofile; July 2022)

** Prof. Julia Lippman, University of Michigan; Prof. Sujata Moorti, Middlebury College

#ClassifyConsent is our campaign for the first-ever film classification (“C”) to call out lack of consent.

Lack of consent is normalised every day, and Australians collectively spend 780,000,000 hours a year watching it. 3 in 5 people can’t recognise non-consensual acts in films. Academics have even studied how the more we depict non-consensual acts as lighthearted or romantic on screen, the less seriously we take consent in real life.*

Our classification is simple: just like with “violence”, it informs viewers of “lack of consent” in content before they watch. But it’s also powerful, turning entertainment into education each time it’s used.

With a single “C”, every film presents an opportunity: not just to acknowledge lack of consent, but to empower millions of viewers to stop normalising it, and start recognising it in all facets of life.

* Prof. Julia Lippman, University of Michigan; Prof. Sujata Moorti, Middlebury College

Previous attempts to impact our culture around sexual consent failed by using a government-led top-down approach, targeted at youth. Consent Labs’ primary audience is young people (aged 12–24). So our strategy was to meet them where they lived: on social media. We launched our campaign on TikTok, exposing the non-consent in famous scenes as examples that would attract our classification.

Overlayed supers unpacked why these scenes lacked consent, and each post was watched millions of times, becoming its own educational asset and sparking debate with material that people were already watching.

The classification meant that Australians watched their favourite content through fresh eyes, seeing what they had previously missed.

With social media abuzz, we pitched the story to mainstream media where journalists independently unearthed their own examples from films – proving the strategic effectiveness of consuming entertainment through an educational lens, rather than trying to make education entertaining.

We launched our campaign for a new classification by posting scenes from pop culture on TikTok, educating with material people loved watching and organically reaching millions with immediate impact. Each scene became a teachable moment of what lack of consent could look like, both on screen and in life.

Every touchpoint of the campaign educated as well as communicated the movement to #ClassifyConsent, and all assets pointed people to the website where thousands pledged their support, downloaded consent toolkits, and submitted hundreds of more scenes.

As the movement hit global mainstream media, Angelique Wan, CEO of Consent Labs, was the spokesperson for prime-time television, bringing the campaign to the attention of the Australian Government.

We’re now working with the Government on the final stage of our execution- the implementation of an official (C) for Lack of Consent classification across films in 2023 – seamlessly integrating education into our favourite entertainment.

Our TikTok posts that revealed lack of consent in unexpected scenes got over 6 million views and sparked vibrant conversation, shares and engagement with every post, turning everyday entertainment into consent education. The more surprising the movie clip or still (a cute animation, a family classic), the greater the impact. A shift in perception was evident, as Australians shared hundreds of more examples from film.

Once the movement went mainstream we gained a global earned reach of over 200 million, and saw 71% of Australians supporting the classification*. Our classification earned the endorsement of Netflix and other platforms, and the Australian Government expressed interest.

The ultimate result is our partnership with the Government to officially implement the first-ever “lack of consent” classification in 2023 - impacting consent culture, millions of screens at a time.

*71% of Australians believe classifying “lack of consent” should be a legal requirement (Pureprofile, July 2022)