By ELIZABETH OLSON
TAUNTING and aggressive teasing have long been seen as disagreeable rites of adolescence, until a string of suicides by bullied students raised awareness of the destructive consequences. A new campaign by a coalition of organizations is aiming to eliminate, or at least curb, bullying by urging parents to teach their children to face down such behavior.
The “Be More Than a Bystander” campaign, orchestrated by the nonprofit Advertising Council, underscores the problem with a series of television, print and online ads and a Web site promoting the idea that if witnesses know what to do, they can take various steps, such as moving the victim away from the situation or reporting the treatment to an adult, to defuse the bullying.
“Parents talk to their kids about drugs, sex, drinking and driving,” said Peggy Conlon, president and chief executive of the Ad Council, a nonprofit group that addresses social issues like teenage dating violence and high school dropout rates. “But they are not always proactive about bullying.”Eighty percent of high school students see bullying behavior firsthand at least weekly, according to research by DoSomething.org, a national nonprofit group that involves teenagers with civic activities and social change. But parents are less aware of the frequency, with only about 50 percent realizing that bullying occurs routinely, according to the organization’s findings.
The Ad Council is working with groups like Facebook; AOL; the federal education and health departments; and the Free to Be Foundation, which includes the entertainers Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda, to kick off the public service advertising campaign this month. It will run for more than one year.
To underscore the problem, one of the ads shows a girl being bullied by two schoolmates in the hallway near her locker. A fourth girl looks on but looks bewildered about what to do.
“They want to help, but don’t know how,” says the commercial’s narrator. “Teach your kids how to be more than a bystander.”
The campaign’s print and online ads have declarations like “You’re Worthless” and “Everybody hates you” to underline the starkly negative messages that victims receive.
While some dismiss bullying as a nearly universal but fleeting experience, Ms. Thomas says the Internet has made the problem worse.
“This is not the old ‘Boys will be boys,’ ” she said. “This has gotten vicious and lethal. I’ve talked to children who dread coming to school, who want to change schools or be home schooled. It is dire now because it’s online. People are anonymous and they say awful things and are not held accountable.”
Having been introduced by Timothy Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, Ms. Thomas joined with Ms. Conlon in early 2011. Ms. Conlon said the Ad Council had long wanted to tackle bullying but needed to cover the production and distribution costs, which average $800,000 to $1 million per campaign.
The Ad Council got support from the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and pro bono help from the New York ad agency DDB, part of the Omnicom Group.
The council tested some approaches with consumers and settled on the parental focus after reading a report from DoSomething.org. The group used Facebook to collect responses from more than 50,000 high school students from April through August 2012. It found that half the teenagers said they rarely helped anyone being bullied or had ever seen anyone else doing so. The report is posted at dosomething.org/bullyreport.
In a separate research, Communispace, an online market research firm, concluded that the parents of school-age children found it “compelling, unexpected and encouraging” to empower their child to act against bullying.
As a result, the council helped expand the Web site stopbullying.gov, hosted by the Department of Education. The site provides adults with tips, like warning signs or ways to assess questionable behavior, to teach children how to handle bullying.
The campaign ads have a “message that is uncomfortable and disconcerting,” said Joe Cianciotto, executive creative director for DDB New York. “We wanted to remind parents that what their kids are witnessing is serious, and it can have devastating effects.”
“The television and print ads create a sense of urgency,” he said, “and the Web site provides the tools to do something.”
The filmmaker Lee Hirsch, who created the 2011 film “Bully,” which follows five students who are bullied, made a public service ad that shows a boy being harassed on his school bus.
CNN contributed a television spot with the anchor Anderson Cooper, and the MLB Network developed two commercials with its hosts and analysts Brian Kenny, Sean Casey and Dan Plesac. Univision is creating Spanish-language commercials with the anti-bullying message that will be broadcast on its television, radio and online properties.
The public service announcements will also be distributed to media outlets nationwide and will run in donated media time and space. Facebook is hosting a Stop Bullying: Speak Up page. So far, it has more than a million likes and has generated more than 130,000 pledges to stop bullying. Facebook has committed to promoting the campaign throughout the site.
AOL is donating space for banner ads, a video feature on its home page and a spot on its sign-in page.
Magazines like Parenting and The Food Network magazine, as well as some newspapers around the country, will also run print ads free. The campaign is also partnering with the National PTA to spread awareness of the anti-bullying campaign.
“Parents are still influential,” said Ms. Thomas. “We’ve changed the culture around letting friends drive when they’re drunk. The message we want to get over now is that bullies are not cool; they’re jerks. And you can do something about it.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 24, 2012
An earlier version of this column described the Advertising Council’s role in the Web site stopbullying.gov incorrectly. The council helped expand the site; it did not create it.
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