For Sofia

Background

Swedes appeared to be able to cope with just one issue at a time. This meant many serious problems simply never got covered by the media. Also, Swedes have an obsession with names and faces. When a boy with a name got washed up on the shore, Sweden reacted with an outpouring of emotion. But if a raft sinks and 150 people drown, it got ignored.

In this context, the challenge for UNICEF was to get more donors for its World Parents programme.

Idea

UNICEF funding was used to help children all over the world but media only covered one emergency area and one human faith at the time. What if one child could speak for every child suffering all over the globe? Could a single girl make Swedes notice that all children suffer in silence?

Meet Sofia. She seemed real, a 10 year-old who had escaped men with guns. But then suddenly she was seven years-old, freezing.

500 of images of children in UNICEF emergency areas were used and they were crafted into one 3D animated girl. She was named Sofia because it was the world's most common girl's name. Sofia gave a voice – and a face – to all those children who are not heard or seen.

Results

The campaign got an earned media reach of 663 million people. The film had 987,000 views on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which was a new record for UNICEF Sweden. Sofia was even adopted by UNICEF Brazil to front their national campaign. But most importantly, 37% more World Parents were recruited compared to the same campaign period in the previous year.

Our Thoughts

I wonder if we aren't sometimes too obsessed with originality? Mark Earls has written a brilliant book, "Copy, Copy, Copy: how to do smarter marketing by using other people's ideas." He suggests that we are genetic copies of our parents though unique because we are a blend of the two of them. Human evolution has been through a series of occasional and small improvements.

This hadn't made it into this issue of Directory because we felt it was a bit like "Sweetie", the winner of 13 Cannes Golds in 2014 from Amsterdam shop Lemz.

But Julie argued fiercely that personifying the fate of many thousands in just one little girl was both different and brilliant. Also that we should not just accept it for Directory but we should also donate to UNICEF.