Refugees Real-Time Tweet Responses
By Ogilvy, London, United Kingdom
For Amnesty International Brand Refugee crisis awareness campaign
Highly Commended in category Direct
In subcategory Not for Profit
Project Description
By the time you finish reading this paper, another 472 people around the world will have been
forced to flee their homes for fear of persecution, danger or death. The total number of displaced
people looking for a home is at 65.3 million, and rising every day.
Around 21 million of them are refugees: people who have left their home country altogether –
battling dangerous crossings, border closures, violence, abuses and extortion – to seek state
protection elsewhere.
Countless people are outraged about the treatment of refugees and many are expressing their outrage on social media. But very few of them are doing anything about it. This was our target audience; people who care but who don’t know how to make a difference.
Our brief was to inspire them to take the injustices faced by refugees personally and take action with Amnesty International, the human rights group best placed to fight for meaningful and lasting change.
forced to flee their homes for fear of persecution, danger or death. The total number of displaced
people looking for a home is at 65.3 million, and rising every day.
Around 21 million of them are refugees: people who have left their home country altogether –
battling dangerous crossings, border closures, violence, abuses and extortion – to seek state
protection elsewhere.
Countless people are outraged about the treatment of refugees and many are expressing their outrage on social media. But very few of them are doing anything about it. This was our target audience; people who care but who don’t know how to make a difference.
Our brief was to inspire them to take the injustices faced by refugees personally and take action with Amnesty International, the human rights group best placed to fight for meaningful and lasting change.
Agency Solution
With a modest £50,000 budget, we created the “Outrage is Not Enough” campaign. A world first, we filmed real time personalised messages from refugees in camps in Kenya & Lebanon, directly replying to tweets within hours of the tweet being posted.
Viewers were then directed to Amnesty's global petition that was submitted to the UN, to pressure world leaders to support the millions of refugees seeking resettlement and safe and legal passage.
Our “command centre” had volunteers trawl through thousands of tweets around the clock in real-time. An outraged tweet about the child refugees, for instance, was responded to by Leila, a mother in Kenya’s Kakuma camp.
Our media strategy was to use earned media, PR, news partnerships, retweets, shares – to direct all outraged users to the tweets on Amnesty International’s Twitter channel, and from there, direct people to Amnesty.org to take action.
Viewers were then directed to Amnesty's global petition that was submitted to the UN, to pressure world leaders to support the millions of refugees seeking resettlement and safe and legal passage.
Our “command centre” had volunteers trawl through thousands of tweets around the clock in real-time. An outraged tweet about the child refugees, for instance, was responded to by Leila, a mother in Kenya’s Kakuma camp.
Our media strategy was to use earned media, PR, news partnerships, retweets, shares – to direct all outraged users to the tweets on Amnesty International’s Twitter channel, and from there, direct people to Amnesty.org to take action.