An ingenuous distortion of the YouTube experience is at the heart of a viral campaign aimed squarely at cyberspace bullies. A creative team at Saatchi & Saatchi New York originated the idea as part of their work with the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). The NCPC, home of McGruff the Crime Dog, has identified cyberbullying as a serious and escalating problem among children and teenagers.

“Millions of young Americans are tormented every day on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, as well as by text and instant messages,” says Saatchi & Saatchi NY’s chief creative officer, Gerry Graf. “In many ways, it’s worse than the schoolyard variety because it can spread like wildfire and bullies are anonymous while victims have nowhere to hide.”

The creative team – Ethan Schmidt, Kevin Li and James Cooper – understood that well-meaning public service messages and finger-wagging would fall flat.

“Teens have a thousand voices clamoring for their attention, and most of them are telling them what not to do,” says art director Kevin Li. “We needed to reach them right where they are, but we also realized that we couldn’t eradicate the behavior or eliminate the impulse. We thought our focus should be urging them to think twice, pause and reflect a little,” Li said.

From that observation, the Saatchi team settled on a compelling and subversive idea. “We wanted to recreate the bullying experience in a way that draws in the viewer, even makes them complicit,” Interactive Director James Cooper said.

They built a YouTube page in exact replica, and shot video of a tween actor who recited poetry in aid of his beloved dolphins. Beneath the video, they added vicious, bullying comments.

“Just as the viewers’ eyes wander to the comments section, perhaps as they begin to find it amusing, the spell is broken,” explains copywriter Ethan Schmidt.

Shockingly, OceanKing97 stops reading his ode to dolphins and reaches through the YouTube screen and rips a comment from screen. He then reminds his audience that online behavior has real-world consequences.

“The effect is jarring. As if having been caught in the act, it discomfits the viewer and commands their attention,” Schmidt says.

“Cyberbullies never witness the suffering they cause — and we wanted to change that. By turning the tables on his tormentors – and the viewers themselves – OceanKing97 spoke for victims everywhere: “we are real people, and the harm you cause is also real”. It was a message delivered one-on-one, intimate, right between the eyes,” says Schmidt.

Viewers reacted via Twitter, describing the effect as “trippy”, “weird/cool” and “out of the box”. The initiative is an emerging viral sensation, with thousands of views in the first week.

This video was launched as a part of the NCPC’s new initiative, Circle of Respect, which will inspire young people to live in ways that embody respect where they live, learn, work, and play.

For more information about Circle of Respect and how to get involved, go to www.circleofrespect.org.

www.youtube.com/OceanKing97