LOS ANGELES — Keep It Real Online, a public-service campaign launched by the New Zealand government to help parents and caregivers talk to minors about internet safety, has achieved international headlines with a cheeky PSA reminding adults that pornography is designed to be fantasy entertainment and should not replace proper sex education.
The Motion Sickness agency created the campaign. It is a joint effort by the Department of Internal Affairs, Netsafe, the Office of Film and Literature Classification and the Ministry of Education.
"We’ve been blown away by the response so far. Obviously the issues we are tackling within the campaign are sensitive, so to see the campaign land so well with parents has been amazing," said Sam Stuchbury, creative director for Motion Sickness.
The advert opens as a naked man and woman, Derek and Sue, knock on a woman's door. "We're here 'cause your son just looked us up online," explains Sue. "We usually perform for adults. But your son's just a kid. He might not know how relationships actually work."
The concerned mother rallies. "All right," she tells her son. "It's time to have a talk about the difference between what you see online and real-life relationships."
"No judgment," she adds.
A website keyed to the campaign also tackles online bullying and how to report illegal content, among other topics, and includes prompts and additional supplemental information.
"Conversations aren’t necessarily being had about these issues across New Zealand’s dinner tables, or in the car on the school run — not in the same way that we have conversations around things like road safety, or 'stranger danger.' We wanted to create a campaign that wouldn’t just bring awareness to the specific issues our young people face online, but would give parents an 'in' for starting what can be quite intimidating or difficult conversations," explained Hilary Ngan Kee, head of strategy and partner at Motion Sickness.
"As Kiwis, we often use humor to help us deal with difficult subjects," she continued. "In some ways it gives us back the power. If we can laugh at something, then perhaps it’s not so scary, perhaps we can tackle it a bit better than we originally thought we could. It was important to us to include a bit of offbeat humor in our ad creative."
At post time, the "Pornography" PSA had drawn over 1.1 million views.
Find the Keep it Real Online website here.
Image source: Screencap by XBIZ