Girls of Paradise
Le Mouvement du Nid
Issue 41 | December 2016
Agency
McCann Paris
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors Julien Chiapolini Riccardo Fregoso Art Director Christophe Rambaux Copywriter Gilles Ollier
Production Team
Art Buyers Véronique Leblanc Delphine Devaux Sound Producer Isabelle Créchet Post Producer Caroline de Génis Website MRM//McCANN Vianney de Villier Clément Hardouin and Pierre Yves Chassaigne Chief Technology Officer Dragan Kontic Managing Director Medialab Agnieszka Kozbial Editor Medialab Mickaël Vo y Phong Nicolas Gras Production Manager Medialab Faustine Boussicaut Sound Producer Capitaine Plouf
Other Credits
CEO McCANN France Bruno Tallent Account Executive Coline Déchelette Digital Account Manager Selim Boukhanef Digital Project Manager Grégoire Talbot Strategic Planning Shadi Razavi
Date
March 2016
Background
Le Mouvement du Nid is a nonprofit organization involved in the fight against prostitution. It helps prostitutes escape a system that ultimately destroys them. All too often the women's clients can be extremely violent.
The challenge was to get the men who use prostitutes to see that they were accomplices in every act of brutality.
Idea
A fake escort website was created, girlsofparadise.sex, on which every girl featured was already dead.
Of course, the guys looking for a prostitute did not know that. When they went online, they could check out the profiles and the photos of girls they liked the look of. When they started to chat, either by text or by telephone, they discovered that that actual girl had been killed.
Girl: Are you ringing to speak to Ines?
Caller: Yeah.
Girl: I don't think you and your mates can have her tonight. She was found dead in the apartment where she used to entertain her clients.
Caller: Nooooo.
Girl: She had been stabbed 58 times.
Caller: No.
Each story was the reconstruction of an actual murder, told to try to show clients that when they pay for sex the real costs can be unbelievably high.
Results
There was no paid media and only local channels were used to promote the idea. In the first month there were over 5,000 visitors to the girlsofparadise website. 73% interacted by chat spending an average of one minute and 14 seconds learning the fate of the women. Over 3,000 phone calls were received.
More than 150 articles were written for major media around the world, prompting debate about the issues.
On April 6, 2016, the deputies in the National Assembly voted for a law to penalise those who pay prostitutes for sex, the best results the Mouvement du Nid could have wished for.
Our Thoughts
What advertisers are all trying to do today is deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Here's a brilliant bit of thinking that does absolutely that, talking to people at the very instant they are fantasising about sex before confronting them with reality in all its nastiness.
We're told the porn industry is the most savvy when it comes to exploiting digital media so it's pleasantly ironic to see one of its enemies being equally clever.