I had heard of BeLong To, but to be honest, I didn’t really know what they did . I’d say a lot of people hadn’t even heard of them. Well that is changing following the release of their new Stand Up campaign, tackling homophobic bullying amongst teens. The innovative online campaign was created by Dublin agency Ask Direct.
The campaign takes the form of an interactive video. The video is shot form the viewers POV and uses facebook connect to personalise it from the off, pulling in the viewers, name, photo, friends and even the name of their school.
It takes them on a journey where they will witness what life can be like for a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people in school today. During the interaction a viewer receives a text message in real-time from within the video including them in the story and de-mystifying homophobic bullying and making a real world connection to them.
The engagement ends with the viewer experiencing how easy it is to challenge homophobic bullying and how great it feels to Stand Up! for a young person who is experiencing it.
The viewer is asked to enter their mobile number and they get two text messages during the course of the video. In one they are asked to donate and then Ask Direct follow up on the text donation with a call.
This campaign uses the technology really well. It also benefits from Ask Direct’s experience with traditional Direct Mail and using the same principles online.
Success?
Well results will be a while coming through as of Wednesday:
- Viewed 10,399 times
- 2,050 engageed through the text message feature of the video.
Yesterday Colin Farrell backed the campaign, he has personal experience, his brother Eamon, a gay man, has recalled how he was terribly and violently bullied in school and Colin has talked about how devastating it was to witness his brother being discriminated against as a child. Colin said:
“Whether it be the attacking of Gay students, which I witnessed first hand happening to my own brother, or students who are in the minority as a result of race or religious beliefs or any other such characteristic that separates them from ‘the norm’, it is all wrong and has no place in a just and compassionate country such as I know Ireland to be”
Well done all involved. What do you think? Check out the campaign here