UNICEF Sweden To Facebook Fans: Forget The Likes, Give Us Cash
What’s the Latest Development?
UNICEF’s Sweden branch recently launched a new ad campaign that gets right to the point: Likes (on their Facebook page) are great, but they don’t save lives. One poster caption says, “We have nothing against likes, but vaccine costs money.” In a video ad, a young actor says that although he worries about his family getting sick, “I think everything will be all right. Today, UNICEF Sweden has 177,000 likes on Facebook. Maybe they will reach 200,000 by summer.”
What’s the Big Idea?
The campaign may be one of the first commissioned by a major charity to target so-called “slacktivists” who are good at clicking on a thumbs-up sign but bad at clicking on a Donate button. Director of communications Petra Hallebrant says, “[S]ocial media [can] be a good first step to get involved, but it cannot stop there.” While Harvard sociology professor Zeynep Tufecki claimed on her blog last year that slacktivists aren’t really activists at all, a recent Georgetown University/Ogilvy Worldwide study showed that social media users were just as likely to give money as others, and they were more likely to volunteer their time.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
