'Someone send me a screenshot of the new group chat named: Everyone Except me.'
Everyone Except
Dutch teenagers spend an average of 4.1 hours a day in group chats, according to research by digital safety organisation Helpwanted. Within those chats, 1 in 4 young people, 23%, experience online exclusion at least once a month: suddenly removed from the conversation, blocked, or quietly ignored. More than half have faced it at some point in their lives.
The pattern that gave the campaign its name came straight out of that research: group chats renamed "Everyone Except", followed by the name of whoever got left out. KPN and Dentsu Creative Amsterdam built Everyone Except, the sequel to KPN's Piece of Me, around that small, cruel act, and around the belief that a market leader in connectivity has a responsibility to lead on how people treat each other online too. It's the thinking behind KPN's #BeterInternet platform and its Better Internet Hub, which gives parents and teachers concrete advice on spotting exclusion and talking to teenagers about their digital lives.
At the centre of the campaign is a 4.5-minute short film directed by Emma Branderhorst, following a young man carrying the emotional weight of being deliberately excluded by his own friends online. The film is set to "Buut Vrij" (Home Free), a song Dutch singer-songwriter S10 wrote and performed specifically to capture the isolation felt by victims of cyberbullying.
The core message is aimed less at the person doing the excluding, and more at everyone watching it happen. The campaign's objective is to activate what it calls the silent majority: the bystanders in every group chat who see exclusion unfold and say nothing. Its message is that even a small gesture from one of them, a check-in, a message, speaking up, can completely break someone's isolation. Come for each other. Also online.
That message reached beyond the film itself. Everyone Except played in 114 cinemas across the Netherlands, ran on TV and billboards, and found further distribution through RTL and Videoland. A Snapchat lens put viewers directly in the bystander's position, and a social series carried the real stories of teenagers like Boaz, Feline and Reggie. In classrooms, KPN partnered with Stichting School & Veiligheid on interactive educational modules, alongside De Kindertelefoon, Stop Pesten Nu, Helpwanted/Offlimits and Dr. Remco Spithoven of Saxion's Cyberweerbaar NL.
Awards: Grand Jury Award (SXSW 2025), Global Effie contender, Gold Film Craft: Direction + Silver + 2x Bronze (Clio Health 2026), 2x Silver (Esprix Awards 2026), 5x lamp + 1x Finalist (ADCN 2026), 3x Shortlist: Film Craft: Script, Health & Wellness: Brand-Led Education & Awareness, Media (Cannes Lions 2026).
Learn more at: kpn.com/beterinternet/iedereen-behalve
Press coverage:
Contagious (Campaign of the Week)
Little Black Book (LBB)
Client: KPN
Agency: Dentsu Creative Amsterdam
Case Study: