Ad Council and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Launch PSAs to Help Protect Teen Girls from Online Exploitation (News Release)   6/8/2005 - 583 views,

NEW YORK, June 8 /PRNewswire/ — The Advertising Council, in partnership
with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), launched
today a series of national public service advertisements (PSAs) designed to
raise awareness about the prevalence of online sexual exploitation and to help
teenage girls better protect themselves against online sexual predators. The
new PSAs are the second installment of the campaign, which began in May 2004,
and debut this month to coincide with Internet Safety Month.
While June is also a time to recognize the benefits of the Internet, NCMEC
and the Ad Council chose this month to launch the campaign to remind families
that, just like in the “real” world, there are people who want to harm
children in the “virtual” world. With the advent of the Internet, many child-
predators have quickly adapted to the technology and use it to contact
potential victims in their attempts to perpetrate crimes against children.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice study, of the estimated 24 million
child Internet-users, one in five has received unwanted sexual solicitations
with teen girls being the primary target, receiving two-thirds of the
solicitations. NCMEC cases and focus group testing also show that many teen
girls are particularly susceptible to these predators because they tend to be
more focused on relationships; therefore, they are vulnerable to the
“grooming” techniques used by child sexual predators.
Sponsored by NCMEC and created pro bono by ad agency Merkley + Partners,
the new PSAs are an extension of the first national multi-media campaign
designed to address this issue. The initial round of PSAs aimed to educate
parents about what they could do to protect their children online, whereas the
new ads target the teens themselves. The new PSAs seek to prevent girls from
forming inappropriate online relationships with older men in an effort to
reduce their risks of sexual exploitation and abduction. The television,
radio, magazine and Internet ads direct teens to visit
http://www.cybertipline.com to get tips on how to prevent, detect, and report
online sexual exploitation.
“Our research shows that many teen girls are not aware of the potential
dangers of communicating with older men online and they believe that it can
lead to genuine relationships,” said Peggy Conlon, President & CEO of The
Advertising Council. “These new dramatic, yet identifiable, ads will continue
the awareness we achieved in the first round of work by showing girls the
potential dangers and empowering them with resources to help protect
themselves against online sexual predators.”
In the first six months of the Online Sexual Exploitation campaign, the
parent-targeted PSAs received more than $29 million in donated advertising
time and space from the media. In addition, according to a recent Ad Council
study, parents who saw the PSAs were significantly more likely to have talked
to their children about the potential dangers of chatting online with people
you don’t know.
“Our goal is to reach teens before predators do,” said NCMEC President
Ernie Allen. “The Ad Council campaign has proven successful in reaching
adults, and we hope that our message will carry over to teen girls to help
them identify, prevent and report sexual exploitation they encounter while
online.”
The new television and radio spots, which are also available in Spanish,
show teen girls how easily a predator can manipulate their insecurities and
end with the tagline, “Don’t Believe the Type.” To view the PSAs, please visit
http://www.adcouncil.org/campaigns/online_sexual_exploitation/.
“As parents and as people who watch the 11:00 news each night, this issue
is obviously dear to our hearts,” said Andy Hirsch, Executive Creative
Director/Partner at Merkley + Partners. “We hope this campaign can lend a
helping hand to help stop online sexual predators.”
Per the Ad Council model, the PSAs are being distributed to more than
28,000 media outlets nationwide later this month and will run and air in
advertising time and space donated by the media.