Younger generations have never been so connected. However, it remains hard to reach them and harder for them to speak up for revealing potential abuses. While familial violence has dramatically increased in 2020, Enfant Bleu, a French charity, needed to find a solution for having an easier way to reach these kids. With schools closed, our main alert system was short-circuited, as a protection association usually rely on teachers for detecting cases of abused children. Our challenge was to create a new channel for children to free their speech. To do so, we thought about going where they feel confident and spend their time, within video games.

We created the first in-game Fortnite character whose mission was not to win the game but to listen to abused children in order to save them. The avatar was played by members of the association to discuss with other young players and detect cases of abuses using the in-game chat system. The whole operation should be “undercover”, as if abusive parents were informed about the avatar, they could ban the game. This way we also should avoid traditional mainstream media, and focus on micro-influencers to reach a very specific target.

We picked Fortnite because it’s the most popular video game totally free to play. It also is a free space where parents are not to be found. Now Fortnite works as a game but also as a social media platform. Kids connect to the game to meet their friends. We knew that this game could help us to reach the kids we wanted to help.

Based on the native features of the game, we created our character with a specific appearance and nickname, to make him unique, for kids to recognize him. Every player who added the avatar was a potential child abused, we had to discuss with every one of them.

We had to reveal its existence to our target and avoid parents. So to introduce the avatar to children, and only them, to our action, we teamed up with talents, who are followed by kids and not adults.

To chat with kids, we used traditional features of Fortnite: voice and text chat. We didn’t pay the game publisher to set up a new communication tool.

To create our in-game character we bought specific blue skin and specific in-game items. We achieved to turn this character into a unique character.

Then, we had to make him known and certified. So, we worked with a specific group of influencers from gaming and esport world trusted by kids. These talents own a strong power towards their audience. With their support, we acknowledge the character’s existence. We worked on Twitch, Instagram or Snapchat using most of time short-lived content to be sure that parents and potential torturers couldn’t watch our messages.

It was active 24/7 for 1 month. After this period, we made the character public to open a global debate around video games and their power to help kids.

While our Fortnite character was online, we received 1 200 friend requests from kids. 30% of these requests were related to dangerous situations asking for urgent treatments.

But for an association, an important KPI was also the capacity to raise visibility of the cause defended in mainstream media and in public conversation. Undercover Avatar achieved to generate more than 700 million media impressions thanks to press coverage.

Impact was so strong that French government through the competent authorities decided to set up a specific task force gathering gaming publishers, French Justice and French Police in order to work on solutions to turn video games into a new way to identify players who are abused kids. Even French Police mentioned that this campaign was recognized by their US colleagues from FBI.

Enfant Bleu association is now one of the top social actors. In 2020 they received +30% of donations vs 2019.