Assignment: The Covenant House of NYC is on the frontlines of the fight against sex trafficking in New York, but their resources are limited. They needed a way to elevate the problem of sex trafficking in the minds of New Yorkers and enlist them in the fight against trafficking in their own city.

Strategic Problem: In the United States there is a grave misconception that sex trafficking is a third-world problem. The painful truth is that sex trafficking, one of the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprises, is a monstrous problem right here in New York City.

Everyday New Yorkers are unaware that this happening all around them, often because they are more focused on the problems they experience every day. So how did we get their attention?

Creative Solution: We connected the massive problem of “trafficking” to a problem they experience every day—traffic. Our goal was to help them understand that the traffick in this city is far worse than they think.

When passengers entered a taxi, a 30-sececond single-take video playing on the display screen brought them into the world of a sleazy pimp and the young, terrified girl he was trafficking—and let them know that girls are victimized in their own neighborhoods, often for the price of the average taxi ride.

Our experiential campaign played in taxis all across the city, helping New Yorkers understand there are worse way to be stuck in traffick—and inspiring them to text a donation to Covenant House, to help fight this horrific problem.

Additionally: We also learned that everyday New Yorkers are unaware that this happening all around them, in part because they have of the misperception of what sex trafficking really looks like. Hollywood has created this image of young women in chains, alone in a dark, remote place. But in reality, sex trafficking can happen in average looking places, right next door to where we live.

With dark and foreboding photography, we sought to change these perceptions by challenging them head-on. Our print campaign shows the common perception of sex trafficking—young women chained up in a deserted, dirty warehouse. The copy however, goes right at the misperception at the heart of the problem—calling out the audience’s misunderstanding and giving them a more accurate picture of what this horrible situation is really like.