They went to watch a romcom, ended up watching a horror film starring... their own child. [Free Resource Issue]

In partnership with

Dear Creative Souls,

Parents today are into “sharenting” like it’s nobody’s business. Heck, we’ve made an influencer niche out of it. But every picture of your child you share is a data point you’re handing a potential deep-faker.

P.S: Trigger Warning

P.P.S.: We’re changing things up for you folks! Look out for a resource at the end!

The Creative Problem

How do you warn parents about a danger they don't believe exists?

The challenge for Deutsche Telekom was massive:

1. The Norm: "Sharenting" (sharing photos of kids) is socially rewarded behavior (likes, comments).

2. The Blind Spot: Parents view these posts as harmless memories and a symbol of love, not data points.

3. The Barrier: Lectures on "data privacy" are boring and easy to tune out. Nobody assumes the worst could happen(well, of course, until it actually does).

They needed a way to make the invisible consequences of data sharing feel visceral, immediate, and emotional.

The Strategic Leap

The classic - “Show, don’t tell.”

The agency (adam&eveDDB) realized that a standard PSA wouldn't work. They needed to weaponize the very technology they were warning against.

The Core Insight: Parents aren't afraid of "data loss." They are afraid of harming their children. To make the threat real, the campaign had to fast-forward time and give the victim a voice.

Deconstructing the Execution

1. Inversion (The "Future-Back" Approach)

The Model: Instead of thinking forward ("What photos should I post today?"), Inversion forces you to think backward from a disaster ("How did my child’s identity get stolen?").

The Application: Most campaigns try to prevent a problem. This campaign assumed the problem had already happened. By placing the narrator in the future, the ad bypassed the parents' current optimism bias. It didn't ask "What if?"; it showed "Here is the result." It forced the audience to view their current actions not as isolated moments of joy, but as the root cause of future pain.

2. Second-Order Thinking

The Model: First-order thinking focuses on immediate results. Second-order thinking focuses on the consequences of those results.

• First Order: I post a photo → I get likes (Positive).

• Second Order: The photo is scraped → It feeds a dataset → It trains a scammer's AI (Negative).

The Application: We are wired to ignore second-order effects because they are invisible and distant. This campaign visualized the invisible. It took the abstract concept of "data privacy" and translated it into the concrete reality of "wrongful imprisonment" and "credit fraud." It forced the audience to weigh the cheap dopamine of a "Like" against the heavy cost of their child's future safety.

3. The "Medium is the Message" (Recursive Loops)

The Model: When the method of delivery proves the argument itself.

The Application: The brilliance here is Recursion. They used AI to warn about AI. If they had used a human actor to play the adult daughter, it would have been fiction. By using a Deepfake to deliver the warning, the ad became a real-time demonstration of the threat. The existence of the video was the proof that the technology is dangerous.

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Why It Worked

This campaign succeeds because it utilizes "The Mirror Effect."

Public awareness campaigns often fail because they feel like lectures from an authority figure. "A Message from Ella" works because it feels like a confrontation with reality. It doesn't offer a neat solution or a happy ending; it simply holds up a mirror to the absurdity of our current digital norms and asks: Are you sure this is safe?

The Lesson for Us: Sometimes the most powerful way to expose a hidden system isn't to explain it, but to let the audience feel its weight.

Prompt Corner:

Use this prompt with your preferred AI assistant to help you brainstorm similar campaigns!

"I want you to act as a Strategic Creative Director. I have a [Insight/Behavior/Problem] that people currently view as harmless or positive: [INSERT YOUR TOPIC HERE].

I need you to help me disrupt this view using Systems Thinking. Please generate 3 campaign angles based on the following frameworks:

Inversion: Fast forward 10 years. Show me the catastrophic result of this behavior as if it has already happened. How do we look back at today?

Second-Order Thinking: Map out the invisible chain reaction. Move past the immediate benefit and visualize the 'Hidden Cost' that hits the user later.

Recursive Proof: How can we use the problem itself to deliver the message? (e.g., using AI to warn about AI).

The goal is to unsettle the audience and reveal the hidden system they are participating in."

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Figment is written by Abbhinav Kastura, a creative director who has spent a decade making impactful internet videos and Guru Nicketan, an advertising nerd, B2B Marketer, stand-up comedian, and a film buff.