Content for good

November 4th 2022 By Paul Williamson 2 minute read

Living in a digital world, we’re constantly bombarded by content that’s trying to grab - and keep - our attention. It’s becoming increasingly more apparent that you need to capture people's attention in what seems like a split second, otherwise your story could get lost in the ether.  
 
When it comes to getting people's attention, there are some easy wins, such as making people feel good (who doesn’t love a heartwarming puppy reel?), using well known people, unique activities or a strong headline that stops you in your tracks. 
 
Recently ticking all of those boxes, we saw America's biggest Youtuber, Mr Beast, challenge Dwayne Johnson to a game of rock, paper, scissors. He declared: “If you beat me, I’ll donate $100,000 dollars to charity.” Now, who wouldn’t want to see that?
 
Adding to the appeal, the challenge was recorded at the world premiere of Black Adam, featuring Johnson as the lead character (the man of the hour, it seems like he is EVERYWHERE right now!). 
 
This was different though. People were on tenterhooks throughout - and weren’t disappointed. It was heartwarming, engaging and interesting. After all, it's not every day that there's $100k riding on the age old game of Rock, Paper Scissors! I placed a bet in my own head as to who would win and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen until I found out who won. Annoyingly I was wrong too so it’s a good job I wasn’t betting on the game as well.  

I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but I highly recommend you watch the video here, guess who you think will win at the start and  let us know if you were right! 

 

I love seeing how creative campaigns can be and how they are used to grab your attention. Often when we think about the success of an advertising campaign, it’s focused on how much advertising spend is available and where it will gain the most attention. 
 
A recent advertising campaign that I saw that instantly grabbed my attention, was incredibly authentic and meaningful really stopping people in their tracks was from Good Organisation (Social Ventures) CIC. They support marginalised people to share in the positive benefits of tourism within York, UK, and are an award-winning community interest company. 
 
The campaign focused on homelessness and depicted people in this situation as the ‘invisible’, often ignored and overlooked. A survey conducted in July 2022, of more than 8,000 UK adults carried out by the housing charity Shelter and YouGov revealed that close to 40% of UK households are just one paycheque from potential homelessness. With all of the uncertainty in the current social and economic climate, this could well be a situation that impacts someone we know in the future, if not already. 
 
The campaign was a series of posters put up in places where you would normally see a homeless person. There were messages such as ‘A bad place for a poster. An even worse place for a bed’ and “If this poster were a homeless person, then most people wouldn’t even look down”. 
 
 This isn’t an expensive campaign to execute, but it has an incredibly strong message and is incredibly impactful. This just goes to show it’s not always the biggest budget that has the biggest impact.

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