This Law Enforcement Agency Warns Teens against Sextortion with 'Butt Out, Creeps' Campaign

In Alberta, online child sexual exploitation offences have increased by more than 185% in the  past five years.  

ALERT (Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams) wanted to connect with teens directly and warn them against the dangers of sextortion, where children are coerced into sending explicit images online and are then extorted for money.  

Knowing that teens don’t respond to heavy-handed messages, they launched a campaign that spoke to teens in their own language, featuring singing and dancing eggplant and peach emojis. 

The singing eggplant tells kids, “don’t be a wang, don’t be a boob, sending nude pics to  strangers makes you look like a newb.” The peach character sings “if someone you know asks you for a nude, tell someone you trust, then ghost that weird dude”. Both executions end with a call to 'get smart about sextortion'.  

The videos are running on Snap, TikTok, and YouTube – where teens spend a lot of their time - and drive to butt-out-creeps.ca, where teens can get easily digestible information on what sextortion is and how to handle it.  

“The threat of sextortion is more prevalent than ever. It’s inside our homes and on our devices”, says Supt. Marc Cochlin, ALERT chief executive officer. “We needed a memorable campaign that connected with kids on a level they would understand.” 

The campaign, which launched on October 5th, features videos, digital ads, and a site. Creative was developed by DDB Canada, and media was also handled by DDB Canada.