Stop It Now! Minnesota Web Site and Social Marketing Research
Reaching Adults at Risk to Sexually Abuse Children
This content-dense Web site offers online information and resources to help adults prevent the sexual abuse of children before a child is harmed and before an adult, youth, or child acts in a sexually inappropriate way toward a child.
Research-driven Messages and Strategies
for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
Social marketing is the use of marketing to change behavior. Stop It Now! Minnesota asked The Watson Group to help the coalition take a bold step forward in its marketing. They asked us to apply social marketing to changing the behavior of the one
audience in the very best position to stop the epidemic of child sexual abuse: adults with sexual behavior problems toward children.
The key messages and marketing strategy for this Web site and media campaign were developed through an in-depth social marketing research process, beginning with
interviews with adults at risk to sexually abuse children, and emerging as a statewide mass media campaign and online resource center.
Engaging Now!’s broad coalition of partners was vital to the success of this project.
Prior to launch, the project team tested the ad campaign and key messages with law
enforcement, victim advocates, adult survivors and the media, and secured the expressed support of these groups in preparation for release in the media and on the Web.
Research showed that “safe and confidential” was an essential promise for persuading adults at risk to abuse to seek help for their own behavior. 
