Cybersmile: #TrollingisUgly
The Cybersmile Foundation wanted to raise awareness about the devastating impact of cyberbullying among young social media users. They tasked adam&eveDDB London with creating a campaign that would cut through the noise of Instagram's "perfect" aesthetic. The goal was to demonstrate the physical and emotional toll of trolling in a way that felt native to the platform.
Creative Idea
Digitally altered an influencer's body in real-time to match the contradictory demands of online trolls.
Cybersmile partnered with influencer Chessie King to Photoshop her body in real-time based on negative troll comments, visually manifesting the absurdity of online abuse to prove that trolling is ugly and impossible to satisfy.
The Real Time Distortion of Chessie King
A 24 Hour VFX Sprint
The production required an unprecedented level of real - time collaboration between adam&eveDDB and the VFX teams at FreeFolk and cain&abel. As Chessie King posted Instagram Stories, the creative team monitored the comments for specific body shaming critiques. These insults were immediately sent to editors who digitally "fixed" her appearance in a series of rapid - fire turnarounds. By the end of the day, the constant stream of contradictory demands transformed King into a grotesque, alien - like figure with an impossibly thin waist and oversized features, visually proving that the "perfect" body demanded by trolls is a physical impossibility.
Impact Beyond the Feed
The campaign achieved a massive global reach of over 100 million people without a single penny of paid media spend. While the initial transformation video garnered 6.9 million views across platforms like NowThis and 9Gag, its most significant legacy was its integration into UK school curricula. Educators used the project as a primary tool to teach children about the psychological effects of online abuse and the deceptive nature of social media aesthetics.
Turning Negativity into Art
Chief Creative Officer Richard Brim noted that the goal was to "unearth and expose the pain caused by cyberbullying in an environment where it naturally breeds." The project is now cited as a benchmark for influencer - led social purpose marketing, demonstrating how to use a platform's native features to tell a story. As Iain Alexander of Cybersmile observed, the response was a "groundswell of support" that effectively turned a negative social trend into a positive global conversation.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
A nonprofit dedicated to digital wellbeing and combating the psychological effects of online abuse.
Category
Anti-bullying campaigns often rely on passive messaging or statistics that fail to capture the visceral reality of trolling.
Customer
Social media users who witness body shaming without considering the cumulative, destructive impact of their words.
Culture
The rise of perfection culture on Instagram and the normalization of anonymous, aggressive commentary on women's bodies.
Company
A nonprofit dedicated to digital wellbeing and combating the psychological effects of online abuse.
Category
Anti-bullying campaigns often rely on passive messaging or statistics that fail to capture the visceral reality of trolling.
Strategy:
Expose the logical fallacy of external criticism by manifesting contradictory demands into a singular, grotesque reality.
Customer
Social media users who witness body shaming without considering the cumulative, destructive impact of their words.
Culture
The rise of perfection culture on Instagram and the normalization of anonymous, aggressive commentary on women's bodies.
Strategy:
Expose the logical fallacy of external criticism by manifesting contradictory demands into a singular, grotesque reality.
Results
The campaign achieved significant global impact, including 6.95M news coverage views and an online readership of 1.72B. It was featured on major outlets like BBC London, The Sunday Times, MSN News, and HuffPost. The video highlights that the campaign has become an educational tool used in classrooms to teach children about body image and the effects of cyberbullying. It reached millions of kids around the world and generated a massive wave of positive sentiment, with thousands of supportive messages countering the initial trolling.
1.72B
online readership
6.95M
news coverage views
300K+
live story viewers
Strategy Technique
Exaggerate to Reveal the Truth
The campaign took the "perfect" body demands of trolls to an extreme, revealing that following their logic leads to a grotesque, inhuman result rather than beauty.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Dramatize the Problem
By literally applying every hateful comment to the influencer's appearance, the campaign turned abstract verbal abuse into a shocking, visible deformity, making the psychological damage of trolling impossible to ignore.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
The campaign's power lies in its real-time digital manipulation and the clever use of an influencer's platform to create a visceral visual metaphor for the toxicity of online comments.
The seamless, real-time distortion of the human body serves as a powerful and disturbing visual representation of the campaign's message.
Utilizing an Instagram takeover to reach the target audience in the exact environment where the problem occurs was a brilliant strategic move.
The use of bold, colorful typography and graphics helps maintain an 'internet-native' feel that resonates with a younger demographic.
Chessie King's authentic and vulnerable performance makes the experiment feel personal and high-stakes.
The synergy between the real-time social media execution and the high-end digital retouching created a 'live' event that felt both urgent and terrifyingly illustrative.
