The Shoppable Girls media plan leveraged a variety of "shoppable" units on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in an unexpected way to capture the attention of an elusive target audience (females 13-15). At first glance, the shoppable units appeared to be typical fashion ads for a teen clothing line. It was only when they were clicked on that the campaign's purpose was actually revealed. It wasn't the clothes that were for sale. It was the models wearing them. Each unit then drove to a landing page where girls could educate themselves about sex trafficking and the issues/warning signs that surround it.

Sex trafficking is the world's 3rd largest criminal industry. But despite significant news coverage, Canadian teens barely know the problem exists, let alone that they were vulnerable. As a leader in the area of servicing at-risk and trafficked youth, Covenant House - an established Canadian not-for-profit - wanted to change that. The goal was simple: raise awareness and understanding BEFORE girls were lured into a life of sex work. Education has always been the best weapon. But traditional attempts to educate our target had failed. This time, we knew we had to find a way unique way to educate them that they'd recognize, relate to, and - most importantly - remember.

Shoppable Girls was an anti-sex trafficking campaign by Covenant House Toronto targeting female teens. The campaign centred around a fictional online fashion brand that didn’t sell the clothing it advertised, but the models wearing them. By emulating the style of a real fashion campaign, and geo-targeting shoppable social media units to areas frequented by both teens and sex traffickers (schools, community centres, and malls), the campaign found an effective and unexpected way to use media to capture the attention of an elusive teen demographic.

Shoppable Girls targeted female teens aged 13-15, the group statistically most at risk of being targeted by traffickers. They also happen to be one of the more elusive demographics when it comes to this type of messaging. Because of that, our strategy demanded a unique approach: to educate and raise awareness by taking advantage of an existing behaviour we knew young audiences participated in regularly (social commerce). By hijacking that behaviour with shoppable media units, we'd able to engage with our target in a compelling, shareable way. We'd then amplify the digital component of the campaign with a widespread OOH campaign targeting retail-centric areas we knew our audience frequented - mall posters, hoarding walls in retail centers, and a brick and mortar storefront takeover launched under the guise of a Shoppable Girls "flagship store".

Shoppable Girls launched in mid February, 2020, on social and OOH and was in market for a total of three weeks. The social commerce component consisted of a variety of shoppable units across Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, and was amplified by a widespread OOH campaign in areas known to be frequented by our target audience (malls, public transit). Three days after launch we opened the Shoppable Girls flagship store which generated significant press coverage both domestically and internationally.

Overall the social commerce campaign performed extremely well, exceeding Facebook, IG, and Snapchat's benchmarks for our given demographic. Snapchat was particularly effective at driving to the website, exceeding benchmarks by 157%. Ultimately, on a media budget of less than $70,000 CAD, the digital component of the campaign generated 350,000 unique site visits and 41 million impressions. The OOH campaign proved to be similarly successful, generating 57 million impressions (17 million more than originally planned), across 1317 units, on a media budget of $171,000 CAD.