#SoSockingSimple wins ISPA best PR campaign

A ground-breaking campaign which features one man and his, er, special sock scooped the Best ISPA PR Campaign award. 

#SoSockingSimple was created as part of the Steering Clear campaign, which the IWF run in partnership with the UK Government and Marie Collins Foundation (MCF). The film encourages young men to report sexual images and videos of under 18s they stumble across online. It highlights that reporting is quick, easy and anonymous. 

#SoSockingSimple is the third phase of the Steering Clear campaign and was produced in response to evaluation findings by independent research agency Ipsos Mori which showed a clear gap in knowledge around reporting child sexual abuse imagery online. While the majority of young men say they would report 48% of men aged 18-24 said not knowing how and what to report is factor which would stop them reporting sexual images of children.

Sexual abuse imagery of children is a hugely sensitive and emotive issue. Online child sexual abuse destroys lives. Yet, for this award-winning phase of the campaign a brave decision was made to move away from a serious and empathy-led approach in favour of using humour. All the campaign materials were created in consultation with people who had themselves been child victims of sexual abuse. 

This campaign was the first of its kind both for the IWF and the MCF. 

Emma Hardy, IWF Communications Director, said: “Child sexual abuse material is such a serious, and for many still-taboo, topic that in order to reach young men we needed to make it accessible to them. Using humour made the film sharable and we saw huge numbers of young men commenting and tagging friends. 

“This campaign went beyond our expectations in terms of reach and engagement and it’s wonderful for this work to have been recognised at the ISPA awards.”

You can find out more about the campaign here.