We’ve all seen the ads on TV featuring starving, homeless or otherwise suffering children while a concerned voice begs us to help. Of course, it’s all too easy to fast forward or mute or change the channel when it’s just an abstract image on TV from some far away land.
So, when the Norwegian branch of the SOS Children’s Villages International charity launched a campaign to provide warm clothing for displaced children in Syria, they wanted to spotlight how readily we help someone right in front of us, but all too often ignore those who are many miles away.
The result is a brilliant video that has already gained more than 2 million views.
They placed a young actor at a bus stop without a coat in freezing temperatures in Oslo. One by one the hidden cameras captured strangers giving the boy the very coats off their backs.
Then at the end of the video, they ask:
Are you a person who would act when you see someone who needs help?
The children in Syria are freezing. Send SOS to 2160 and give a warm jacket.
“People should care as much about children in Syria as they care about this boy,” Synne Rønning, the information head of SOS Children’s Villages Norway, told The Local. She also noted that the child was a volunteer who was never in any danger during the filming.
This is a brilliant guerilla marketing move that beautifully expressed the organization’s message while delivering a clear and easy text-driven call to action. Well done, SOS CVN! Just tell me how folks in the States can contribute as well and I am on it!
(NOTE: Be sure to click on English in the captions to get the translations if you need them).