Online grooming has become an increasingly urgent topic. With an estimated 750.000 child groomers active online daily. And yet how online groomers approach their young victims is still widely unknown.

To educate young audiences about the dangers of online grooming, we partnered with Amber Alert to write a love song that hid the five steps of online grooming in the lyrics. We then turned to influencers on TikTok to launch a dance challenge that like most dances, spread like wildfire. While the actual message of the dance was hidden at first, it was revealed on International Missing Children’s Day by local law enforcement.

When it comes to PR strategy, we based everything around the insight that not only our target audience, but also most online groomers are active on TikTok. So spreading our message there would not only educate potential victims, but also make a statement towards online groomers that feel safe and anonymous on the platform. The main asset we used was a short clip that introduced the song that was created for the campaign along with a dance that included the 5 steps of online grooming.

The main media used in the campaign was TikTok. Not only because it’s popular with younger audiences, but also because it’s one of the most important platforms when it comes to online grooming. In order to generate PR, we used creators and influencers on the platform to spread the dance. The dance was online for 24 hours until on International Missing Children’s Day we revealed our true message.

The hashtag #checkbeforeyouchat reached over 5 million people in 25+ countries in just 24 hours, sparking a global discussion about online grooming with an estimated 4,7 million video views. It also inspired huge organizations such as Interpol to support the campaign on social media turning a viral dance into one that challenged predators on and offline.