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Square Enix and The Ad Council Team Up For New Anti-Bullying Campaign Featuring ‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ Characters

Kingdom Hearts 3, Square Enix and The Ad Council have teamed up to create a groundbreaking partnership against bullying.

The campaign, which is the first of its kind to feature the iconic Kingdom Hearts characters, will be titled Because of You and boasts a goal of inspiring teenagers to build a more inclusive and welcoming community.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Promo Image
Kingdom Hearts 3 Promo Image

PSAs will be made including many Kingdom Hearts 3 characters and will encourage teenagers to consider the full impact of their actions, whether they be positive or negative, on their peers. The hope is to foster a more welcoming culture among teenagers and to help teens realize the far-ranging effects simple gestures, good or bad, may have on an individual.

This is the first time that the Ad Council has teamed up with a video game publisher to create a PSA.

The PSAs will feature footage from the latest Kingdom Hearts installment, including scenes from Disney’s Frozen and Pixar’s Toy Story and will be distributed to media outlets nationwide. The ads should be showing up on TV and social media soon.

Brendan Docherty, Sr. Manager of Product Marketing at Square Enix, explained, “At its core, the Kingdom Hearts series is about the power of friendship and helping those in need in order to overcome darkness. The Kingdom Hearts story is filled with characters overcoming trials and tribulations through friends helping and supporting each other in tough times. We thought these themes matched very well with the valuable life lesson of the Because of You campaign.”

Kingdom Hearts 3 Promo Image
Kingdom Hearts 3 Promo Image

The Ad Council released some shocking statistics in a press release as to why campaigns such as Because of You must exist.

“Recent data shows that two-thirds of teens say they’ve experienced bullying, but most of them don’t think they contribute to the problem. This means many teens aren’t aware that their actions may be hurtful to others and they don’t always realize when they’ve crossed the line from joking around to saying something harmful. The Because of You campaign is a movement encouraging teens to reflect on the power of those words and actions.”

Kingdom Hearts 3 Promo Image
Kingdom Hearts 3 Promo Image

Anastasia Goodstein, SVP of Digital Product Management at the Ad Council, said, “Because of You is all about how your actions, for better or for worse, can have a big impact on those around you, and helping teens think about how those decisions could affect others. Kingdom Hearts 3 is one of the year’s biggest game releases, and we’re excited to see the game’s message of support and friendship reach millions of teens. It’s a great fit with our campaign’s idea that everyone should reflect on the power of their actions.”

Those interested in learning more about the campaign can visit BecauseofYou.org or https://becauseofyou.org/kingdomhearts. The website features multiple tools, including “Honest Cards” which prompts users to consider the impact on others of various positive and negative behaviors.

On social media you can follow @BecauseofYou on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.