Rip & Roll - My Experience with Digital Activism

In 2011, I was unlucky enough to get caught up in a digital activism nightmare.

You see, I work for an out-of-home media company called Adshel. If you’ve never heard of it before, we are the company responsible for the advertisements on bus and tram stops across Australia.

At the time, we were running a campaign for the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities called Rip & Roll, a safe sex advertisement for gay men that featured on Brisbane bus stops. 

During the first week the campaign was active, we received over 30 complaints from the general public.

Unbeknownst to Adshel at the time, these complaints were strategically orchestrated by the Australian Christian Lobby, who coordinated to have the campaign removed.

As part of Adshel’s Commercial agreements with the councils in Brisbane, upon receiving such a large quantity of complaints a campaign must be pulled down from the street. While Adshel was following standard business protocol, the news broke that we had caved as a company to the ‘homophobic pressure’ of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Cue public outrage…

Almost instantly, the Facebook page  ‘Homophobia – NOT HERE – Adshel Caves to Homophobic Pressure’ was created. Overnight, they received 500 followers. This proceeded to grow to over 40,000 followers by 5.30pm the following day. The campaign continued to spread like wild fire, with the Facebook page receiving over 90,000 followers to date.

As a result, Adshel came under intense pressure from the public. The phones rang off the hook with a barrage of abuse, criticism and public outrage. Over 750 email complaints were received in just a few days. And the creator of the Facebook successfully organised a group of demonstrators to rally outside our Brisbane office. 

As a loyal member of the Adshel team, it was awful to witness my friends (and even a couple of ignorant family members) follow the group. I knew the company I worked for was most certainly not homophobic. The actions had been taken as a result of our internal protocol. Yet all we could do was sit back, watch the drama unfold, and wait for the storm to pass.

As soon as the Australian Christian Lobby’s Queensland Directory Wendy Francis took responsibility for the original complaints against the Rip & Roll campaign, and the fact that more people wanted the campaign up than the people who wanted it pulled down, Adshel immediately reinstated the ads.

The decision Adshel made to re-instate the campaign was a glowing example of the power of the people – and more importantly, the power of digital activism.