KPN, Dentsu Creative Team With Dutch Pop Star to Fight Online Shaming

Powerhouse campaign wins 2 Grands at Clio Music Awards

“A Piece of Me,” a music video from Dutch singer-songwriter Meau, is at the heart of a campaign created by Dentsu Creative Amsterdam for Dutch telecomm KPN that reveals how forwarding intimate photos without consent can ruin someone’s life.

Today, the project won a pair of Grand trophies at the Clio Music Awards.

Based on real stories and aimed at Gen Z, the film (directed by Emma Branderhorst) tell the story of a teenage girl who sends a sexy photo to a boy. He shares it with his friends. Soon, everyone at school has seen it. Though victims deserve understanding and support, the students mercilessly shun and shame the girl.

The song and video quickly garnered millions of listens and views online. Dutch schools have screened the clip in classrooms to educate and create empathy among students for victims of online shaming.

Inspired by the success of the campaign in the Netherlands, an English-language version of dubbed “A Piece of My Soul” was subsequently released to reach a global audience.

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Here, Dentsu creative directors Gijs Sluijters and Joris Tol discuss the making of the music-focused campaign urging Gen Zers to “think before you forward.”

Muse: Tell us about the thinking behind this campaign.

Gijs Sluijters: Research by Kantar showed that KPN was losing brand value, as consumers lacked a clear association with what the brand stood for. This challenge led to a brief with a clear purpose: to claim the internet as its domain, just as Heineken claims beer and Nike claims sports.

Joris Tol: The relationship we’ve had with KPN has been way beyond surface-level for years. They don’t just come to us for campaigns. We needed to nail something fundamental, their true purpose as a business and positioning as a brand. The truth is that the internet, once invented to bring us together, isn’t all fun and good stuff anymore. So, we decided to make the internet better. The first thing we wanted to tackle was online shaming.

What kind of research did you do before you embarked on the creative process, and what did you learn?

Joris Tol: We knew that sexting was a common type of foreplay, but research showed the true scale—1 in 3 young people worldwide engage in sexting, and 1 in 10 youngsters in the Netherlands. It’s a normal thing, part of a trusting, intimate relationship. But when these images are shared widely, it has serious consequences for victims. We dove into the issue by creating a unique TikTokTalkshow, engaging young people in moderated conversations on everything from cyberbulling to mental health. These conversations identified online shaming as one of the biggest and most urgent issues facing teens, and one where KPN could make a meaningful difference.

Why did you decide that music had to be a fundamental part of this campaign?

Gijs Sluijters: Gen Z doesn’t like ads, but they do like music and entertainment. To connect about such a sensitive topic, we collaborated with the biggest artist in Dutch teenage culture—Meau. Meau makes intimate, highly personal songs about everyday topics such as love, personal development and loneliness. With over 200,000 followers on TikTok and almost 200 million Spotify streams, she is one of the most trusted and influential voices among Gen Z. 

Joris Tol: The close bond with her followers made it easy to have real conversations and collect stories. That was key to keeping it real. Everything was created together with victims.

How does it feel to make such a meaningful impact?

Joris Tol: You don’t change the world by lecturing people—you have to move them. When my sister-in-law, a teacher, told me she was going to show the film in class, I was thrilled. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. And later, it even became part of the conversation in parliament. I hope this is only the beginning. There’s still so much more we can improve for a better internet.

Gijs Sluijters: It’s amazing to see and experience what commercial creativity can achieve when it’s used the right way. This campaign didn’t only raise awareness for an important issue, we also managed to get the conversation going, as the video is being used in hundreds of schools, and we eventually changed the law on shame sexting. [Last summer, the Dutch senate passed the Dutch Sexual Offenses Act, which criminalizes the sharing of intimate images of a person without their consent.] That is something else than raising sales with x%. That is making something that really matters.