Are you an Accidental Pirate?

1 IN 3 AUSTRALIANS ARE ‘ACCIDENTAL PIRATES’

The new research revealed that a third of Australians – 34% - said they see piracy as stealing or theft but they regularly do it by burning, buying or downloading illegal or unauthorized copies of films or TV programs. 

In other words 1 in 3 Australians participate in something that they don’t agree with. To describe this disconnection between people’s actions and beliefs, we've coined the phrase ‘Accidental Pirate’.

We've created a national campaign focusing on defining piracy and educating the public on the actions that constitute content theft at the everyday and every person level.

The campaign aims to achieve this in a unique way, using humour.  We wanted to create likeable caricatures of everyday Australians to disarm the automatic barriers to the message, before challenging people to become more informed in the future.

“Every act of piracy has consequences across a broad spectrum of creative pursuits and businesses and, at the most basic level, is responsible for taking someone’s livelihood away with every act. Our campaign will encourage people to think about their actions and attitudes towards piracy and we want to communicate with people on an inclusive level.”

David Roach, the writer/producer of Beneath Hill 60 said, “It takes a small army of people to make a movie. So anytime someone downloads a film illegally, it makes our job – which is getting great Australian stories to the screen – that much more difficult.”

Tony Singleton, MD of creative agency The Furnace, who designed and created the campaign for IPAF said, “Previous anti-piracy campaigns have mainly told consumers off.  But if you’re basically appealing to people’s better nature to do the right thing, then wagging fingers at them really doesn’t get you too far.  We needed to take a completely different approach - stop talking down to people and start engaging them in a conversation.”

The ‘Accidental Pirate’ campaign is a fully integrated public education program involving national print, television, radio and cinema, public relations and social media. We want to start a conversation with Australia and ask people to, please, watch what you watch.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Stephen Jenner, Director of PR, IPAF
02 9383 4299 / 0409 776196