get the trolls out:
The Game of Trolls
brief
The Media Diversity institute joined forces with Facebook to launch a subsidiary called Get The Trolls Out, an organisation against cyber-bullying.
Insight
When you can’t beat them join them right? Then infiltrate….
idea
We wanted to fight trolls with trolls, firstly recruiting them through short but sweet recruitment ads which where on tone with “meme culture”, verbally and visually. And after we have them on our side, we teach them, transform them into a good troll and then let them out into the big bad world…wide web.
how we did it
We created two phases to this campaign:
GOOD TROLL HUNTING - Where we kickstarted our troll recruitment campaign with job ads featuring the infamous Trollface. Keeping these meme style animations short and to the point and having them run them across Facebook and Instagram stories. We looked into skills that digital unicorns of the space held and tried to entice them to help us.
GAME OF TROLLS - The recruitment ads were followed up with a short explanation videos enlightening people of our quest to fight hateful trolls with positive ones and how to do it in the nicest but efficient way. We kept these super simple on Facebook with Trollface grabbing your attention from the off. And on Stories we added extra educational info for users who swipe up to find out more.
Fight the internet - out troll the trolls
“how to write a good troll comment”
Shorter is better; long replies are less likely to be read
Use humour! – but never in a mean, abusive way or at the expense of the person behind the original post
Use emojis, gifs, memes and found imagery* to make your point
Use grammar and spelling correctly (you’d be surprised what people pick up on)
If you can’t think of a good reply, move on – no point in dwelling on one comment forever to get that perfect reply. We’d rather have you get through more comments and reach more people
Seek out the trolls – don’t rely on your own social feeds to find the bad trolls, instead go to where they are and fight them on their own arenas. Facebook groups and hashtags are good places to start looking
The design
We created dramatic IG Stories and FB videos that used large typography, cinematic effects and dramatic SFX to ask get our audience on board.
Our hero was none other than “Trollface”, he was the face of the initiative. “Trollface” was animated in an iPhone Animoji style and had a number of number of facial expressions, themed to the videos.
the recruitment ads
We fought fire with fire by recruiting trolls to join our ranks, these videos looked at the skills we needed our trolls to have to fight the bad.
The game of trolls - be good.
Once we’d recruited our trolls, they helped us educate our audience on what positive trolling is and how to do it, so that they can start adopting the techniques themselves. These lived on Facebook and Instagram, both having interactive CTA’s for the wider audience to enlist.
Case study: The aftermath
With this we took people through what we did, how we did it and what impact we’ve made on the online community. We also provide the key aspects of positive trolling as campaign takeaways.