Netsafe is New Zealand’s leading internet safety watchdog. A nonprofit running on a very lean budget, the organisation works to educate Kiwis about online dangers such as email phishing.
Working collaboratively with Netsafe, the DDB Group produced Re:Scam, an Artificially Intelligent email bot designed to engage scammers in drawn-out conversations, wasting their time so they couldn’t target ordinary Kiwis.
The call to action encouraged email-users to forward their scam emails to Re:Scam, which in the process educated our target audience on what constitutes a scam email and how to identify one.
Mango’s role was to generate widespread awareness, both encouraging people to use the bot and alerting them to the dangers. In the process, Re:Scam was able to identify and intercept victims of phishing scams, with Netsafe personally following up and offering advice.
Within a month of launch Re:Scam had achieved a local mainstream media “grand slam”, with coverage in major broadcast and print media. The campaign achieved more that 100 million impressions globally and after 2 months, 72,261 emails had been forwarded to Re:scam, generating over 205,000 unique hits on Netsafe’s Re:scam page.