Emoji Turns Real
Vi Agroforestry
Issue 36 | September 2015
Agency
MRM//McCann Stockholm
Creative Team
Art Director: Christian Soderholm Copywriter: Fredrik Sundqvist Account Director: Elin Hedensjo Account Manager: Sofia Finnman-Larsson Creative Director: Fredrik Hildebrand
Production Team
Technical Provider: Cellsynt Media Agency: The Amazing Society
Date
June 2015
Background
Vi Agroforestry was a Swedish charity organisation that fought poverty and starvation in eastern Africa – through tree planting. Like charity organisations all over the world, they collected money through text donations. The problem was that people needed to text complicated SMS codes to make donations.
Idea
The use of emojis was the new global way to communicate. The Esperanto of the 21st century. It was time for a better, smarter and more user friendly solution than complicated SMS codes. So, the idea was to team up with a technical provider – in cellular technology – and make it possible to donate through texting the tree emoji. For the first time ever – an emoji got a real value. Each tree emoji you texted was equivalent to a donation of 2 US Dollars – which was the sum Vi Agroforestry needed to plant a real tree in eastern Africa. You could send up to 25 emojis in one text message. The campaign was launched in social media. The tree emoji was also promoted on digital billboards in Stockholm.