We created a unique technical platform allowing participants to donate their social feeds for 24 hours. Users could “become” any one of seventeen humanitarian aid workers whose posts would populate their own Facebook or Twitter feeds for a day, appearing as if they – the participant – was actually living the life of the humanitarian aid worker. For each story, we prepared a series of photographs and narrative posts, 15 in total, describing a dramatic chapter in an aid worker’s story.

We wrote first-person stories and designed the narrative flow to unfold naturally on these platforms. For example, formats included selfies, food photos, check-ins, emojis and “how are you feeling?” cues.

This 24-hour feed donation mechanic had never been done before, and it delivered deep and immersive narratives.

A #ShareHumanity hashtag was created to serve as the call-to-action for the entire campaign.

We spearheaded a series of media relations tactics leading up to World Humanitarian Day, beginning with an Associated Press exclusive that broke the story.

Within the “humanitarian storytelling white space,” we leveraged each influencer’s appeal to tell a different story each day targeting a different audience. For instance, we capitalized on footballer Kaka for sports-centric media coverage such as Bleacher Report; Australian singer/songwriter Cody Simpson and Columbian superstar Juanes for stories in Entertainment Weekly and MTV News; and the true-life stories of each humanitarian for features in Elite Daily, Huffington Post and Marie Claire.

On the eve of WHD, we held a media event at the UN headquarters in NYC. The evening opened with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was hosted by “Good Morning America” anchor Amy Robach and was punctuated by musical performances from Cody Simpson and Juanes, leading to a front-page story in El Tiempo, Columbia’s largest newspaper.

Objective#1

We generated massive disruptive social reach and engagement.

Over 20,000 social feeds were donated, bringing these powerful stories to live in over 180,000 posts. Collectively this generated over 350,000 social responses in newsfeeds, and delivered a combined 2.5 billion impressions across social, donated media, and press coverage, causing the campaign to trend on social networks.

This was over 1000% increase in year on year conversation, an overwhelming response given the budget was the same.

Objective#2

We provoked widespread coverage from influencers and press. The campaign engagement drew superstars including Ellen and Beyoncé, who tweeted and posted each with tens of millions of followers of their own.

Press mentions took off in outlets far beyond our traditional news orbit. Overall, we got 1330 press mentions, media outlets like Bleacher Report, Perez Hilton, Harpers Bazar, and Yahoo Beauty, sites that don’t normally cover cause-related issues, picked up the campaign.