But first: a prologue starring Kevin Bacon

You know Kevin Bacon? Right. So his foundation is called Six Degrees, because of course it is. Six Degrees and Advertising Week teamed up to launch Purpose, Produced, which pairs six ad agencies with six nonprofits (cute) to make pro-bono campaigns. We were incredibly fortunate to be partnered with the SHERO Foundation, which supports girls and young women who have survived sex trafficking.

SHERO foundation | protect girlhood

When we first started this project, my mental concept of “sex trafficking” was all about those signs in women’s bathroom stalls at airports. I guess I thought trafficking mostly happened to women from other countries, lured to the US with a bait-and-switch promise, and before you know it, they’re held prisoner. And yes, that absolutely does happen.

But working with SHERO opened my eyes. Domestic sex trafficking victims are more often girls and young women who are U.S. citizens, and they’re more likely to meet their trafficker over social media or gaming platforms than on the street. I grew up online in the ’90s. I know the internet is crawling with creeps. But I don’t think most people realize that kids on Roblox are being trafficked. That these girls might still be going to school, living at home, doing their thing, all while their childhood is stolen out from under them by predators who see them as things to be bought and sold.

I watched an interview with a survivor where she held up a photo of herself as a little girl. She spoke gently to that younger version of herself, telling her she’d live through this, that everything to come would make her stronger. And all I could think about was the injustice waiting for that girl, the fact that her girlhood was going to be taken from her, and that the world around her would fail to notice, speak up, or act.

Girlhood is about what’s at stake. It’s about what gets stolen when trafficking takes away a girl’s sense of safety, normalcy, and that messy, churning rush of glitter and playlists and magic and power that girlhood is supposed to be.

Film

Out-of-home

Digital

Photography LIBRARY

This project had no budget. Like, literally zero dollars, which was new for us, even in the world of purpose work. So we basically threw up the bat signal, and the community showed up. People we’d worked with before, and people we’d never met, all volunteering their time, their resources, their everything. Sean Murphy and his team at Gannet Creative House collectively pulled off actual magic. And thanks to the magnetism of Sean’s orbit, producer Skye’s persuasion, and the importance of SHERO’s mission, basically the entire town of Fort Walton Beach, Florida got on board. Local restaurants fed us. A condo owner let us stay in his Airbnb for free. Young talent showed up in droves,

Considering the lack of budget, the scale of what we captured was kind of wild: a roller derby scene, high school halls, onstage dance performances. Everything in the script, Sean and his team found a way to make it happen, including one of our favorite moments, a scene with girls playing Dungeons & Dragons in the park. We didn’t know this going in, but Skye’s brother Austin is a huge D&D nerd, like, appears regularly on podcasts, has special pouches for his special dice, etcetera. He drove down from Atlanta with maps and all sorts of esoteric equipment to make sure our scene was legit. None of the four girls had ever played before. They started out shy, but quickly jumped in. One volunteered to be the Dungeon Master: I can just… make up whatever I want? Two minutes later: Okay, there are good knights and vigilante knights. In this world, queens have more power than kings…They kept playing during the scene then stayed to finish even after we wrapped. It felt like we were watching a girl’s origin story in real time.

From the shoot to the talent to post-production, so many people volunteered to bring this campaign to life. We are so incredibly grateful to all of them.

Credits

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