Children’s charity ‘Save the Children’ have upped the ante when it comes to highlighting their message to the public.  The video campaign which is now live, places the events in Syria onto the streets of London – with the aim to get people to sit up and take notice – how would you react if this was closer to home?

1) The aim

Simple in its approach yet so utterly effective.  The charity wants to highlight the urgent need for ongoing help and support to young refugees.  Using video to tell the story is a great way to hit home, whilst also using the younger generations media outlets.

Like many charities it is hard to raise your name above the parapet of other worthy causes out there.  To have your voice heard and to raise your brand voice against others can be difficult.

What Save the Children have managed to do is bring the reality to peoples doors and really pull on the emotional heart strings of the public.  Would people act any differently if the situation was happening right outside their front door?

This key message and question is a great way to engage with their audience, to draw them in and bring the campaign to life using real stories.

2) The story

Of course we talk about branding story’s all of the time, for Save the Children they’ve captured their brand story through these short campaign videos – highlighting the work that they do and why it is so important.

This is actually the second part of their campaign, with the first short video campaign released in March last year.

The second,  film shows the story of the same young refugee girl from the first video and allows her to tell her story and show how things have changed for her.  In this second film we see how she has now become separated from her family and flees the country by boat.  It shows her struggles, the loneliness and the separation at such a young age from her family.

What makes this most hard hitting is that the actors in these short films are portraying real life scenarios and life stories – this is the part that is real. It helps to bring to life, the questions behind the film of “what if this was your daughter?”, “what would you do if you had the choice”?

It is these subliminal questions that are grabbing people’s attention and making them sit up and take notice.

3) Charity campaigns

Charities now are changing their approach when it comes to engaging with their supporters.  They too need to be much more creative in their campaigns, to get people’s attention and to also gain their following and most importantly ongoing support.  Look at Cancer Research’s campaign with the #nomakeupselfie or the ‘ice bucket challenge’ for ALS Awareness.

The more you can engage with your audience the bigger the response you will receive.  For Save the Children, the video campaigns, have been a huge viral success with over 52 million YouTube views to their channel in a year.  For Save the Children, it has certainly helped them to raise their profile and position their brand in the minds of the public.

The charity needs to keep the momentum going now they know they have the audience watching them, in order to really push their messaging out.  A big call to action and in some instances telling people how you want their support – sometimes the campaign can be so good, people can get caught up without actually realising they’re needed to do something.

References: Creative Review
Pictures from the Youtube video.