Cannes Lions 2015 – Creative agency Ogilvy & Mather has joined forces with Monica Lewinsky to launch Upstandr, an anti-online shaming site.
Caught up in one of the biggest scandals to hit the White House, Lewinsky was ‘patient zero’ for bullying in the internet age. In her speech at this year’s festival, Lewinsky spoke about how she was thrown into the spotlight at a very young age, and warned that everyday people are falling victim to compassionless attacks online.
To help spread her message, Ogilvy & Mather has launched Upstandr, a Tumblr blog featuring memes, videos and statistics about online shaming. The agency created The Gutter, a fake gossip site as bait for unsuspecting internet users. By clicking on a fake article they are directed to Upstandr instead.
‘The more we click the more numb we get to human lives suffering, the more numb we get the more we click,’ said Lewinsky. ‘We are co-creating our content through our clicking behaviour. Clicking is a public act and, I would argue, a moral one too.’
The Big Picture: Marketers are fighting back against trolls and turning negativity into positivity. Find out more in our macrotrend The Sharded Self.