It’s no secret that the Reel 360 team has an ongoing crush with Empire and Hidden Figures star Taraji P. Henson. So, imagined how thrilled we were to find out cross-platform end-to-end messaging service Signal is using her in a new campaign?
In a world full of ZOOMs, FaceTimes, chats, personally targeted social media ads and manipulative content, knowing who’s listening, watching and stealing your data is becoming an important part of our everyday lives.
Which sucks for all of us.
The pandemic and lockdown have driven more and more of our personal moments online resulting in the biggest data scrape in human history. And yet the importance of personal data privacy continues to be something that everyday users don’t completely understand.
That means that changes to user agreements and users don’t know what they are surrendering. They are told that being tracked is convenient and that their conversations are totally private when in fact they are being monitored and sold.
That’s why Signal partnered with actor, producer, activist and entrepreneur, (Sigh) Taraji in its first marketing campaign to help explain why personal data privacy is more important now than ever.
The campaign created by New York agency, Technology, Humans And Taste [THAT] launched online on January 28, International Data Privacy Day – an international effort to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best practices.
The hero film, “Protect Yourself” stars Henson as she takes us on a tour of her house, highlighting the tracking devices hiding in plain sight and reminding us that we have “more followers than we think.” With her unmistake-able wit and some real straight talk Taraji shows us how vulnerable we are and then shows us the only solution. The only truly private place on your phone, Signal. Watch below:
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“Signal is a nonprofit and we consider this campaign a social service to raise awareness about data privacy. It’s a huge story to tell and until now, it’s seemed too complicated to resonate with a wide audience,” said Nathan Phillips, Co-Founder, Technology, Humans And Taste [THAT]. “Our hope is that this film can serve as the opening salvo in an ongoing campaign of clear and simple information, delivered ethically without stealing data and crafted to connect to the hearts and minds of every single human who uses technology to connect.”
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“I think to call this work a “marketing campaign” or even a “campaign” connotes this large, targeted effort that generally we disagree with. We want to create tools for inspiration and education. We are doing this by partnering with creators to interpret “privacy” in their own unique ways. We are serving as a service that can extend and amplify those messages to the millions of people that have raised their hands with questions around what data privacy really means and how they can exist online on their own terms,” added Jun Harada, Head of Growth and Communication, Signal.
The spot, with (sigh) Taraji is available online now.
CREDITS:
CLIENT: Signal
AGENCY: Technology, Humans And Taste [THAT]
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on Twitter at @colinthewriter1
