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Red Cross’ new campaign lets people trade their socmed reactions to dollar donation for Afghanistan

Jean Cabico - December 9, 2021

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Afghanistan – As part of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) commitment to serving the people of Afghanistan, the humanitarian organization has launched a new data-led film inspired by the timeless expression, “If I had a dollar for every time…”

Titled ‘React For Real’, which was created in collaboration with creative and CRM agency Wunderman Thompson Dubai, the film demonstrates the potential monetary value of the emoji reactions on social media.

Wunderman Thompson, who worked with teams in Sydney, Seattle, and London, as well as New York for the campaign, has conducted a data analysis of social media reactions and research on real-time needs in Afghanistan. Anonymous data was garnered, studied, and analyzed to highlight the emojis and hashtags that were most commonly used in response to this crisis.

Ewan Watson, ICRC’s head of campaigns, media relations, and content, shared that the organization wanted to show how powerful the collective concern could be on the lives of Afghans if they had a dollar for every social media post. 

“We hope this film encourages people to support our work in Afghanistan as winter sets in and families are struggling to have the basics they need to survive,” said Watson.

Meanwhile, Faysal Abdul Malak, Wunderman Thompson’s managing director for UAE, noted that the urgency of the cause meant that the film had to be created in record time and with a bare minimum budget. 

“We’ve proved that emotional appeal does not always have to rely on a high spend – you just need a good idea, a passionate team, and a brilliant client, all of which we have in droves,” said Malak.

The campaign will be launched across 17 countries in three languages.