Creative Classics: an overlooked digital abuse ad with real impact

Daisy Phillips, creative director, The Academy PR, reckons vanity is eclipsed by impact, as demonstrated by a The Cybersmile Foundation campaign.

When asked to think of overlooked campaigns, nothing immediately sprang to mind, which is the nature of the assignment. The work dominating my LinkedIn feed and the industry press isn’t always the work creating real impact, it’s just those who shout the loudest.

So, I went looking for an idea that was more than vanity metrics. Something that genuinely moved the needle. That’s when I discovered The Forced Feed from Havas SO and digital abuse charity The Cybersmile Foundation.

Given the campaign is all about the dark forces of the algorithm, it’s perhaps no surprise Meta didn’t serve it up to me. Instead, my February feed was dominated by Bad Bunny dwerking and Wuthering Heights thirsting, a steady diet of (albeit stimulating) slop, but I digress…

The campaign centred around the launch of a fictional food brand, Algorithm™, exposing how social platforms force-feed us harmful content, from hate speech to violence, within seconds, without consent.

Featuring more than 1,000 products, from Free Range Misogyny Eggs to Racist White Bread, each item represented a real person’s feed. The products were then placed on real supermarket shelves and delivered to politicians, media and influencers in HARMpers.

The issue was urgent, the execution arresting, but most importantly, it created real-world impact. 

Number 10 reportedly used the campaign as official evidence supporting global policy discussions around algorithmic accountability and consent-based content delivery.

I’m not sure why there wasn’t more industry appetite for this one. Maybe it was simply too hard to stomach, but that’s exactly why it deserves its flowers.