Frontiers in Business, Economics and Management 
ISSN: 2766-824X | Vol. 15, No. 2, 2024 

 

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Don’t be a Murder 

-- The advertising campaign plan for anti-cyberbullying 

Chenwen Jiang, Rui Mao, Zhanglu Chen, Mingyue Xia 

Faculty of business, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 

 

Abstract: The goal of this article is using an extremely impactful advertising campaign to impact target audiences’ mind. This 
advertising campaign aims to raise online healthy awareness of young people. Making them fully aware of the serious 

consequences of cyber bullying. The higher the social concern of this issue, the more people will concentrate on their behaviors 

online. This article as an example to demonstrate the advertising campaign is necessary to promote online safety and healthy in 

Australia. 

Keywords: Target audience, Cyberbullying, Message strategy, Media selecetion. 

 

1. Position Statement 

The Office of eSafety Commissioner belongs to Australia 

government, which is committed to helping all Australians 

have safe, positive experiences online. Statistics around cyber 

bullying are alarming. It is reported that more than 42% of 

young people are bullied online, and 53% admit to having 

participated in cyberbullying in some form (Issa, 2014). There 

are a number of young victims of cyber bullying, who require 

to be protected and saved. In addition, the impact of cyber 

bullying is enormous. Australia government pays attention to 

promoting online safety and healthy. The anti-cyber bullying 

laws has been enacted in 2014 in Australia. (Office of the 

eSafety Commissioner, n.d.). 

2. Objectives 

According to the desired position, our campaign is just for 

Australia government to promote awareness of cyberbullying 

and call actions to stop cyber bullying. What this campaign 

plan to approach is some communication objectives. For more 

specific, there are several objectives this advertising 

campaign expects to achieve over the duration of the 

campaign.  

To reduce 7% of our young people (age 16-24) in the target 

market who are being cyberbullied over the duration of the 

campaign, 3 months.  

Our campaign intends to raise 20% of 16-24 aged 

Australian young people’s awareness of serious consequences 

of cyber bullying over 3 months of the campaign.  

3% suicide rate of Australian young people between 16 and 

24 dues to cyber bullying will be reduced over the duration of 

the campaign.  

This advertising campaign plan to reduce 15% bullying 

comments online that 16-24 young people send online in 

Australia after next 3 months. 

3. Key Insights 

Our key insight is that some of young people may not 

realize the serious consequence of cyber bullying. They may 

not realize that how hurt their intentional words bring to 

others, they are very casual to comment on others online, they 

may just unconsciously say something bad, such as a joke 

"death", may really make others cannot stand and choose to 

suicide to end their lives. Because they may not know the 

seriousness of the matter, unintentional words lead to serious 

consequences. This is a lot of real cases. Our activities are to 

help them raise awareness and thus reduce the probability of 

things happening. 

3.1. Target Audience 

A good campaign should choose a particular group of 

people based on research. So that our campaign focus on a 

specific group of Cyber-bullies and potential Cyber-bullies as 

our target audience, and below are the 4 characteristics of our 

target audience (Table. 1). 

Table 1. Characteristics of TA 

 

3.2. Geographic 

Our campaign focus on a particular group of people, these 

people are age between 16 to 24 years old. According to the 

research, 1 in 3 young people suffered from cyber threats 

online, 50% of them have been bullied online and about the 

same numbers have engaged in cyber bullying (Bullying 

statistics, 2017). So that, this group has victims and 

perpetrators, they are more likely to combine their experience 

to feel the harm of cyber bullying. In other words, the group 

that has the greatest opportunity to change their behavior are 

peers. And we focus on both male and female, because with 

the advancement of social media, both male and female young 

people are able to cyber bully rapidly but with different styles, 

male usually attack others with threats, female usually attack 

others by comments. Because men and women are more 

likely to be violent by cyber bullying and cyber bullying 

others, we choose men and women of this age.  



 

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3.3. Demographic 

Moreover, we choose Australia to disseminate our 

campaign, because among the causes of suicide in Australia, 

cyberbullying accounts for a large proportion. According to 

the news that “around 750 Australian teens commit suicide 

because of cyber bullying (Anatolia News Agency, 2012).” 

And in 2017, about 38% bully took place online in Australia 

(Kenna, 2018). These figures show that cyberbullying has 

seriously affected young people’s health in Australia, and 

Australians are very focused on healthy growth of young 

people. So that there will be more people to pay more 

attention on our campaign. Moreover, because of government 

support, we can promote our campaign through various 

channels, it can attract more attention.  Generally speaking, 

promoting our campaign in a place of high concern for cyber 

bullying can have a more centralized impact.  

3.4. Psychological 

For this aspect, some young people may lack of awareness, 

they may not know the potentially serious consequences of 

cyber bullying (Claire, Jess, Katie, 2016). When asking the 

question that why do they cyber-bully? The answers show that 

they have unimanual mind to consider bad consequence of 

their behavior (Appendix 1). Because they are young and 

innocent, they don’t think about things comprehensively. 

They may not know what kind of harm their unintentional 

words will bring to others. And because they are young, some 

bad words can easily hurt their young mind. Their thoughts 

are not mature enough, so it is not easy to think in different 

way. They may not understand the suffering of the injured. At 

the same time, some victims choose extreme methods such as 

ending their lives because they cannot bear the harm caused 

by these bad words. Moreover, Australian youth's free 

lifestyle, their freedom of speech, so some unconscious words 

bring harm to others, they are not easy to notice.  

3.5. Behavioral  

According to the research, 80% of people use cell phones 

regularly, making it the most popular form of technology and 

common media of cyber bullying (PsyD Programs, 2017). 

Giving information in where it often happened will affect 

more people with experience. And let them know the 

potentially serious consequence of cyber bullying, in order to 

help them get rid of this behavior. Moreover, young people 

are in a rebellious period and are prone to suffer when they 

encounter problems. In such cases, extreme behaviors such as 

suicide are also prone to occur. Through our campaign, let 

them realize the harm of cyber bullying, help them change 

this behavior, and learn to protect themselves in the network 

environment. 

4. Creative Message Strategy  

Cyberbullying happens in anytime, anywhere and many 

ways (See Appendix 2). A research shows that mean, hurtful 

abusive comments in social media and other social 

networking is the most typical type of cyberbullying (Digital 

Humans, 2014). Therefore, this advertising campaign will 

isolate this problem to mitigate. 

4.1. The Big Idea of the Campaign 

We found that under the Australia National law, certain 

behaviors of cyberbullying can be recognized as crimes. 

Including advocating suicide (Cyberbullying Laws in 

Australia, 2015). However, only a few people have the 

awareness that cyberbullying is illegal in Australia (As 

Appendix 3). Many people ignore the fact that they may 

involve in law issue when leaving comments. Hence, the big 

idea of this advertising campaign should be serious 

consequences of cyberbullying.  

4.2. Planning Strategy  

For delivering the messages to audiences, the strategy of 

the campaign should be: 

1) Videos to show directly the serious consequences to 

audiences; 

2) Posters to deliver the message about serious 

consequences of cyberbullying to audiences; 

3) Stickers to enhance the attraction and continuity of this 

campaign; 

4.3. Message Strategy  

This advertising campaign should provoke a feeling of fear 

and dangerous to make audiences farthest understanding and 

perceiving the serious consequences of cyberbullying. Telling 

stories is a very effective way to provoke audience feelings in 

many successful ad examples (Marc, 2014). This inspires us 

to use story-telling to accomplish our objectives.  

4.4. Message Elements 

4.4.1. Slogan  
The slogan of this campaign should be “Don’t be a 

murderer.” As the aim of this advertising campaign is letting 

audiences know that bullying others online this kind of 

behavior would lead to victims’ suicide and self-harm. At the 

same time, these Cyber-bullies themselves would become 

criminals. “Murderer” is the most proper word which can 

express this information, comparing with all of other words.  

4.4.2. Theme Line  
The slogan is the theme line of this advertising campaign 

as well. As the content of the campaign’s videos, posters and 

stickers should relate to “murderer” this word. Thus, “Don’t 

be a murderer”, this sentence will appear in all of the forms 

of this campaign.  

4.4.3. Logo 
The logo (Figure 1) of this advertising campaign should 

have a strong association with “Don’t be a murderer.” Hence, 

we use a ban symbol with a stop gesture to fulfill these 

requirements.  

 
Figure 1. Campaign’s logo 

4.4.4. Color  
Colors in posters and stickers should be dark. Using 

obvious contrast color to highlight the content. Black, white, 

red and pink should be used in this advertising campaign.  

4.4.5. Music 
The proper type of the music in videos should be piano 



 

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music which can perfectly express sad, pain and depression. 

Thus, we found “Urges” is the best music we can use (See 

Appendix 4).  

4.4.6. Common Tone  
The common tone of this advertising campaign should be 

serious and oppressive. 

4.5. Ad Examples  

4.5.1. Posters  
In order to make people learn serious consequences of 

cyberbullying, we design to post different victim true stories 

on posters. We will put hard-understanding pictures to make 

people have the curiosity that “what is this poster’s intention?” 

Then, they will read the story to figure out the doubts. We will 

also post the question “Do you know cyberbullying is illegal 

in Australia?” for audiences on posters to let them have the 

curiosity to learn more at our website.  

This is examples of the first edition, the picture on them has 

two parts, at the top part is bright and happy but at the bottom 

part is dark and bloody (Figure 2). Because these girls are 

using smartphones to bully others, just for fun. However, 

victims are bleeding and dying but these girls does not know 

what is happening.  

 

 

 
Figure 2. First edition design 

 

 In the second edition of the poster, we changed the picture 

(Figure 3). The content of victim stories is different. 

 



 

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Figure 3. Second edition design

We also resize the poster to fit social media platforms 

(Figure 4). 

 
Version 1 

 
Version 2 

Figure 4. Two version of the poster 

4.5.2. Stickers  
As the size of stickers should be small, we give up using 

pictures to dominate the content. Thus, we use red and black 

color to shape a clear contrast in this sticker which may let 

audiences associating dangerous and bad consequences 

(Figure 5). 

 
Figure 5. Sticker’s design 

4.5.3. Videos  
This campaign has 2 different videos. Picture 6 is the 

storyboard of the first video. A boy is seating in front of a 

computer at his room and check his face-book. Then he found 

another boy post a selfie and received a lot of mean comments. 

Finally, he leaved a comment “go die!” to this selfie. He is 

delighted and uses his fingers pretending a gun shoot to his 

computer screen. He closed the computer and walked away. 

However, he does not know that the selfie’s owner dead at the 

other side of the computer with a real bullet hole at the head. 

The victim’s face is bloody and terrifying. At here, music 

comes and subtitle “cyberbullying is illegal in Australia” 

appears at the bottom. Then, the picture will fade out to black, 

“Don’t be a murderer.” will appear after that. 



 

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Figure 6. Storyboard of the first video 

At the second video (As Figure 7), it will in the same way 

to tell the story, but this time is a girl in the school. She is 

using her smart phone to leave a hurtful comment to another 

girl’s selfie. However, the selfie’s owner suddenly jumped off 

the build and died in front of this girl. This girl totally terrified 

and start to cry. At here, same music and same subtitle will 

appear. 

 
Figure 7. Storyboard of the second video 

5. Media Selection 

In Australian, almost 79% people now rely on social media 

channels. Nearly 50% users posted their selfies among 18-29 

years old, and only one in three users have felt excited when 

they received more likes or shares on social media than usual. 

Simultaneously, Australian users are almost on four channels, 

Facebook (94%), Instagram (46%), Snapchat (40%) and 

Twitter (32%) (Figure 8, Sensis report, 2018).  

 
Figure 8. Sensis report 

According to the research from the Detective Thomas Rich, 

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the worst three social 

media platform for bullying. Teens are more likely to share 

their selfies on these three channels with positive emotions 

and end up getting the opposite. (STRAUS, 2019). Combined 

with the campaign’s objectives and target markets, 23% users 

in regional areas are more probably to experience bullying or 

harassment than in the metropolitan areas. Therefore, the 

campaign will choose Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as the 

online advertising method (Figure 9).  

 
Figure 9. Social media platform 

Over a third Australian users have a habit to check their 

social media accounts more than five times per day. There are 

three popular times during a day when they check each media 

account, 71% users would log in their accounts in the evening, 

57% users would treat their media channels as the first thing 

in the morning, and 39% would browse webpages at night 

(Figure 10, Sensis report, 2018). 

 
Figure 10. Sensis report 

Thus, choosing these three time-period as our campaign’s 

posting frequency can achieve a lot of potential viewers. For 

each social media platform, we will register our own official 

account and post campaign’s videos and posters on them. We 

will rely on each channel’s basic function such as hashtag, 

like, comment and repost to expand the influence of our 

campaign (Yadav, Joshi & Rahman, 2015). For example, we 

set the hashtag as ‘stop cyber bullying’ on the Facebook page 

that will help our campaign to build an online community for 

participants, they can share their experience directly under the 

same topic and let others view similar stories easily as well. 

As the campaign organizer, the click of like, share and the bias 



 

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of comment will helpful for collecting the feedback and data 

from the customer. It will be useful for our campaign to adjust 

the posting frequency or time and improve the posting content 

on time (Chu, 2011). 

5.1. Examples in Media Platforms  

Here are some examples of our event on three social media 

channels respectively (Figure 11).

   
Instagram                   Facebook                        Twitter 

Figure 11. Example of social media platform 

 

For our campaign’s offline promotion method, we design 

two versions posters with different real stories. Not only on 

social media platforms, but also display on billboards (Figure 

12) at many bus stations which around schools and 

universities in Australia. We will update another poster 

edition according to the schedule. People will notice the 

contents of the poster when they wait for the bus. (Masters, 

Gibbs & Sandars, 2015).  

 
Figure 12. Bus station’s display 

Engaging with target audiences is important (MCDANIEL, 

BACH & POOLE, 1993). In order to maintain customers’ 

attention and enhance their engagement of our campaign, we 

will update our poster in different editions during the 

campaign. The victim stories will continuously be updated as 

well. In addition, we will put the sticker on the side of the 

sockets in the school and universities, such as libraries and 

study rooms.  These audiences will notice it consciously or 

unconsciously when charging their electronic devices(Figure 

13).This kind of interactions and engagements can increase 

the influences of the campaign and keep people fresh and 

active in activities (Chartrand, 2005). 

 
Figure 13. Electronic devices charging display 

5.2. Media Schedule  

Media schedule is the vital part of effectively 

accomplishing an advertising campaign (Stelzner, 2014). This 

is the media schedule of this campaign (Table 2).



 

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Table 2. The media schedule of this campaign 

 

6. Budget  

This is the overall budget (Table 3) of this campaign: 

Table 3. Budget 

 
 

Online-As the period of our campaign is 3 months, we need 

to promote our campaign on Facebook every day in this 

period of time. Each day of promotion on Facebook is $27.99 

for one piece of message. The promotion on twitter is $33.99 

for one twitter per day. And daily promotion on Instagram is 

$27.99 for one Instagram.  

Offline-As we plan to post on the billboard in bus station, 

there are more than 120 schools in Australia, and we plan to 

post 3 posters in each school. And we plan to put 200 stickers 

in each school. And all the posters will use on the billboard, 

the quantity of poster should be same as billboard. And we 

will invite a team from video studio to record two versions of 

video for us, $57600 includes the post-production. 

7. Measurement and Evaluation 

After 3 months, we will reinvestigate the statistics of young 

people (age 16-24) suicide rates result by cyberbullying and 

the amount of the cyberbullying victim and Cyber-bullies. 

Using these statistics to measurement the performance of this 

advertising campaign.  

There are some uncertain elements would impact the 

performance of this advertising campaign. Firstly, choosing 

acts and actress is important. Are their appearances match for 

the target audiences or provoke resonance for the target 

audience is the critical problem in this campaign. Secondly, 

using bloody and terrifying pictures and videos to provoke 

audiences’ feeling is risky in some extent, because it may lead 



 

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to audiences’ uncomfortable and cheesed emotions. As the 

result, we will pay attention to these uncertainties to make this 

campaign more creative and effective.   

References 

[1] Issa, A. (2014, December 27). Anti-Cyber Bullying Laws Gain 
an Important Advocate in Q Link Wireless CEO. Marketing 
Weekly News, pp.83. 

[2] Anatolia News Agency. (2012, February 29). Increased cyber 
bullying leads to teen suicides in Australia. Hurriyet daily news. 
Retrieved from http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/increased-
cyber-bullying-leads-to-teen-suicides-in-australia-14921.  

[3] Bullying statistics. (2017). Cyber bullying statistics. Retrieved 
from http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-
statistics.html. 

[4] Claire, P. M., Jess, M., Katie, R. (2016). The emergence of 
cyberbullying in childhood: Parent and teacher perspectives. 
Psicología Educativa, 22, 39-48. Doi: 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pse.2016.02.002.  

[5] Cyber Bullying Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved from 
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-
statistics.html. 

[6] Cyberbullying Laws in Australia. (2015). Retrieved from 
http://anxietyfreechild.com/cyberbullying-and-your-anxious-
child/. 

[7] Chartrand, T. L. (2005). The role of conscious awareness in 
consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15(3), 
203-210. 

[8] Chu, S. (2011). Viral Advertising in Social Media. Journal Of 
Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 30-43. doi: 
10.1080/15252019.2011.10722189. 

[9] Digital Humans. (2014). The life and death consequences of 
cyberbullying. Retrieved from 
https://theorganicagency.com/blog/life-death-consequences-
cyber-bullying 

[10] Marc, S. (2014). Advertising Faculty Critique Super Bowl Ads. 
Retrieved from https://moody.utexas.edu/news/advertising-
faculty-critique-super-bowl ads 

[11] Mcdaniel, R. W., Bach, C. A., & Poole, M. J. (1993). Poster 
update: Getting their attention. NURSING RESEARCH-
NEW YORK-, 42, 302-302. 

[12] Masters, K., Gibbs, T., & Sandars, J. (2015). How to Make an 
Effective e- Poster. Mededpublish. doi: 
10.15694/mep.2015.004.0001. 

[13] Office of the eSafety Commissioner. (n.d.). Managing abuse 
sent via text or email. Retrieved from https://www.esafety. 
gov.au/image-based-abuse/action/manage-abuse-sent-via-text-
email.  

[14] PsyD Programs. (2017). What is cyber bullying? Retrieved 
from http://psydprograms.org/what-is-cyberbullying/  

[15] Siobhan Kenna. (2018, September 09). Cyberbullying rates 
have doubled in the Past year. 10 daily News. Retrieved from 
https://tendaily.com.au/news/australia/a180909boy/cyberbully
ing-rates-have-doubled-in-the-past-year-20180909.  

[16] STRAUS, L. (2019). Cyberbullying: Which 3 Social Networks 
Are the Worst? | MomsTeam. Retrieved from 
https://www.momsteam.com/health-safety. 

[17] Sensis Social Media Report. (2018). Retrieved from
 https://www.sensis.com.au/about/our-reports/sensis-social-
media-report. 

[18] Western Australia Police Force. (n.d.). Cyber Bullying. 
Retrieved from 
https://www.police.wa.gov.au/Crime/Technology-
crime/Cyber-bullying. 

[19] Yadav, M., Joshi, Y., & Rahman, Z. (2015). Mobile Social 
Media: The New Hybrid Element of Digital Marketing 
Communications. Procedia-Social And Behavioral 
Sciences, 189, 335-343. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.03.229. 

 

Appendix 1  

 
(Western Australia Police Force, n.d.)

 

Appendix 2   

 

Appendix 3 

 

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/increased-cyber-bullying-leads-to-teen-suicides-in-australia-14921
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/increased-cyber-bullying-leads-to-teen-suicides-in-australia-14921
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pse.2016.02.002
https://theorganicagency.com/blog/life-death-consequences-cyber-bullying
https://theorganicagency.com/blog/life-death-consequences-cyber-bullying
http://psydprograms.org/what-is-cyberbullying/
https://tendaily.com.au/news/australia/a180909boy/cyberbullying-rates-have-doubled-in-the-past-year-20180909
https://tendaily.com.au/news/australia/a180909boy/cyberbullying-rates-have-doubled-in-the-past-year-20180909
https://www.momsteam.com/health-safety


 

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(Cyber Bullying Statistics, n.d.)

Appendix 4 

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaAJze9HM5g 

 
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaAJze9HM5g