The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
Consent Labs invents a C rating so viewers can spot non-consent on screen
An Australian nonprofit invents a film classification for lack of consent — a single C that warns viewers before they watch, the way a violence rating does.
Consent Labs
What it had to solve
Consent Labs, an Australian nonprofit that educates young people about consent, kept finding that non-consensual acts appear in beloved films and shows in moments framed as funny, romantic or cute — and what is normalised on screen is normalised in real life. Three in five people cannot even recognise such acts, so the problem had to be made visible before the watching began.
How it works
Consent Labs, an Australian nonprofit that teaches consent, kept running into the same wall: non-consensual acts appear in some of the most loved films and shows, written into moments played as funny, romantic or cute. What is normalised on screen, the organisation argues, is normalised in real life — yet three in five people cannot even recognise a non-consensual act when they watch one.
The campaign's answer borrowed machinery audiences already trust. Just as films carry a violence classification, Consent Labs invented a 'C' rating, meaning a lack of consent, that would inform viewers before they watch. A single letter applied like an official label turns entertainment into education, giving people the vocabulary to recognise what is happening on screen and off.
#ClassifyConsent made the invented rating visible in culture and backed it with an institutional ask: a formal push for Australia's classification system to adopt the rating for real. The idea did not need to win an argument scene by scene — once the letter existed, every trailer and title card could carry the lesson.
Why it lands
- Borrowing the format of a violence rating gives an invisible harm the one public signal people already understand and obey.
- The C works before the harm plays, so viewers learn to watch for non-consent instead of being lectured after the fact.
- A single letter is repeatable and quotable — a device that travels through film culture, not just advertising.
- Framing it as a classification made the campaign institutional: the endgame was a real rating, not impressions.
What it did
The invented rating gave an invisible harm a public label and moved the argument from a slogan to an institutional ask, as Consent Labs pushed for the rating to become real. D&AD's archive keeps the campaign among its Pencil-winning work.
What you can take
Give a hidden harm the same public machinery as a visible one: an official-looking classification makes an abstract social problem legible, memorable and actionable before the harm even plays.
Since then
The campaign entered D&AD's Pencil-winning archive and kept pushing past its launch: Consent Labs continued to argue that the rating should become official, moving the invented C toward a formal petition for Australia's classification system. Its staying power is structural — a one-letter warning that keeps doing its job whether or not anyone is watching the campaign.
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