Every 12 hours the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) detects 10,824 new images of CSAM online.. The problem is so widespread that in 2.5 years over ten million suspected images of child sexual abuse have been found. Despite the growing online epidemic, tech organizations and government do not do enough to stop the proliferation of this devastating content. We needed to create a campaign that drove awareness of the scale of the issue in a disruptive way to enrage the public and put pressure on institutions to do more. Our challenges were then three fold as we needed to ensure we were sensitive in how we were presenting the subject matter while ensuring this resonated as a global issue relevant to North Americans as well and finally, being a charity, we had a limited budget in which to do so.

Given the sensitivity and deplorable nature of the subject matter, creating a way to communicate the impact and horror of child pornography was a unique and difficult challenge.

In our research, we discovered that the term “lolli” is used as online code by child sex offenders to reference and denigrate their victims. The lollipop became our proxy for victims of CSAM, better known as child pornography. The reality that predators use the term to discuss victims, coupled with lollipop’s inherent association with childhood innocence, made lollipops the perfect way to visually represent the issue.

Capitalizing on the trend of fun and carefree Instagrammable installations, we created a high impact visual installation designed to draw consumers into the experience, then confront them with the realities of this global epidemic. Our initiative was titled Lolli: The Exhibit Nobody Wants To Talk About.

We lined the interior of an industrial container-sized room with 10,824 lollipops: one representing each new image of child pornography detected online every 12 hours. We leveraged the highly visual installation as a dynamic backdrop to attract broadcast outlets and journalists to drive mass coverage, invited policy makers and the public to experience the truth within the exhibit and leveraged compelling yet disturbing statistics to drive awareness for the scope of the problem, all to ensure our message was heard far and wide.

The location of our industrial container-sized installation was carefully selected as part of Toronto’s Stackt Market, a popular downtown complex of small, artsy shops and trendy eateries.

Once inside the exhibit, visitors were confronted with 10,824 brightly coloured lollipops lining the interior. Each lollipop represented a new child pornography image that is detected online every 12 hours. Staggering statistics lined the walls along with verbatim quotes found from offenders on the dark web. Audio recordings from actual survivors detailed their pain, shame, and desperate hope for a solution.

The correlation between the problem and number of lollipops created a haunting dramatization. The sweet smell of lollipops throughout the exhibit added to visitors’ visceral reactions and “infinity mirrors” placed alongside the lollipops multiplied the visual effect.

Over the course of three days, 1,300 Canadians visited Lolli, including the Toronto Mayor, John Tory. National news outlets such as the CBC, Global News and CityNews shot live-to-air segments and photoshoots inside Lolli. Even the New York Times rushed down a photographer to capture the experience in advance of releasing a three-part Sunday feature on this growing problem.

To date, the initiative has achieved over 4,500,000 social and 125,000,000+ earned media impressions with a 580% increase in site traffic where people learned about the issue and donated to show support.

Most importantly, the added awareness caught the attention of industry leaders and government officials, starting conversations on how we can work together to protect our children and begin the fight against this global epidemic.