This Is a 10-Year-Old Girl / Terre des Hommes "SWEETIE"

The problem

"Webcam child sex tourism" is when men pay children in poor countries online and make them perform sexual acts over webcam. At any given moment, 750,000 men are searching for this, yet since the internet began, only 6 people had ever been convicted. The offenders were in wealthy countries, the victims in developing ones, and the law had barely touched the problem.

The insight

Mark Wijnen from the agency Lemz logged into a chat room just to see what would happen. The moment he said he was an adult man from the Netherlands, an 8-year-old boy replied asking for money in exchange for taking off his clothes. Wijnen closed his laptop and cried. That's when the idea came to him: if they could identify 1,000 offenders, they could prove both the scale of the problem and that it was actually possible to solve.

The idea

They built a 3D model called Sweetie, recreating the face and movements of a real child. Whenever an offender connected, a programmer behind the scenes controlled her in real time using motion capture. A team of 4 spent 8 to 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 10 straight weeks sitting in chat rooms, and in the end identified 1,000 men from 71 countries.

What happened

Over 20,000 users made contact. The names, IP addresses, and account details of the 1,000 identified men were handed over to Interpol, leading to arrests and rescued victims. The campaign won multiple Gold Lions and the Grand Prix for Good at Cannes Lions, as well as the top prize at the Dutch Design Awards.

Afterthought

Wijnen said that creative agencies can use their talent to make the world better. 3D graphics, motion capture, international investigation—it turns out advertising's tools can be used this way too. A 10-year-old girl who doesn't exist caught 1,000 grown men.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2014

Featured in

• Fictional People Started WorkingFive people who don't exist — and reality answered back anyway.

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