Washington, D.C.: Meeting policymakers and opinion shapers where they are.
With the end goal of reaching national leaders, opinion shapers, and the media during a moment in time when gender justice issues had moved front and center in the public’s mind, The Ugly Truth ran in Washington, D.C. in 2016 – 2017. With a strong presence during both the inauguration and the Women’s March, we reached a secondary audience: gender justice activists who we sought to engage in the fight to end commercial sexual exploitation. The campaign ran to support the launch of World Without Exploitation, the national coalition to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation. While our primary audience was made up of D.C. leaders, we used out-of-home and non-traditional media (including the pedicabs that ferry tourists around the capital) to also reach tourists. This non-traditional media strategy paid off. The Ugly Truth-D.C. generated public conversations, was featured in Time Magazine, and set the stage for the 2018 passage of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) acts.