Child Focus
Client: Child Focus
Product: Center for Sexual Exploited Children
Title: OK Groomer
Media: /
Country: Belgium
Date Of Campaign: December 21, 2022
Background: Grooming rates have skyrocketed during the lockdowns. And reports of online grooming have continued to rise at Child Focus, the Belgian Center for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children. Last year alone they handled 43 grooming cases. Time to raise awareness and educate kids from 8 to 14 years old about this serious matter. But to reach this tough target audience, a relevant solution was needed.
Idea: Today, the playground isn't just physical anymore. It's also digital. Far away from parents. With 40 million players worldwide, Roblox is the biggest online playground for children. Sadly, online groomers — adults that try to approach kids for sexual contact — are infiltrating into this virtual world as well. That's why Child Focus decided to tackle the problem where it occurs and created OK Groomer: a virtual playground on Roblox that arms kids against online predators.Through an educational experience, children learn to how to outsmart online groomers in a playful way. In 3 mini-games kids experience the tactics used by these predators, that come to life as bad guys. The Befriender shows kids even friendly players can have bad intentions. The Gifter learns young players to never accept gifts from strangers. And, The Trickster warns you not to get tricked by inappropriate chat messages of other players.Once kids know how to identify groomers and recognize their tactics, they're taught how to block and report them. The more they play, the more they learn to defend themselves. And with each lesson learned, players earn coins that they can swap for groomer repelling skins in the OK Groomer shop. In-game clothing for their avatar to keep groomers at a distance on Roblox.OK Groomer was launched with a live, in-game press conference on Twitch and a social campaign targeted to parents.
Results: Not only did the OK Groomer campaign generate 14 Million media impressions (Belgium has a population of 11 Million) and €150.000 in earned media. It also became an educative tool in school, teaching thousands of children about online grooming.
