In 35 crisis-affected countries, humanitarian emergencies and protracted crises disrupted the education of 75 million children between the ages of 3 and 18. Education is crucial for both the protection and healthy development of girls and boys affected by crises. It can rebuild their lives, restore their sense of normality and safety, and provide them with important life skills.

The European Union helps these children to have access to safe, quality and accredited primary and secondary education. The European Commission asked logos to design and run a 6-month multi-lingual digital campaign to engage youngsters across eleven countries of the European Union about the crucial challenge of providing schooling to children in emergencies.

challenge

The digital campaign sought to raise the profile of education in emergencies among youth to cement the perception among teenagers that the right to education, even in emergencies, is a fundamental right. The campaign aimed to help European audiences understand the situation of children in emergencies and showcasing the results of the European Union’s work in this humanitarian field. The challenge was thus to build a sense of pride of the Union by celebrating the EU’s pioneering and leading role in education in emergencies.

solutions

logos first reviewed the facts and trends about education in emergencies. It then analysed the specifics of the audience in order to design a suitable digital engagement strategy.

This preliminary assessment led logos to create communication assets that would appeal to a younger audience. With graphic designers, we created animated gifs that would highlight the main figures and most salient results of education in emergencies programmes.

A team of journalists was thus sent to Colombia, Afghanistan, Turkey and Uganda to meet with teachers and teenagers from education in emergencies programmes. Through pictures and interviews, they sought to have those children in emergencies explain directly to European teenagers their situation and their hopes. This fieldwork led to the production of a 10-minute film that was broadcasted at the campaign’s launch event in May 2019 and later on YouTube. Out of the film, logos selected and edited a dozen shorter testimonial clips for social media dissemination. The crew also recorded more playful videos with children from Africa, Asia and Latin America where they take part in the challenge that we developed for this campaign.

In terms of video production, we also conceived, wrote and produced a two-minute video explainer summarising the main facts and messages about education in emergencies. The video was played thousands of times across the European Union.

The call to action for the campaign was to invite youth to raise their pencil for those children deprived of schools. The aim was to have the pencil become a symbol of support for education in emergencies. The challenge hashtag was thus #RaiseYourPencil. The target audience was invited to share pictures and videos “of” or “with” pencils to show their support for children who are out of school and the EU’s work to get them back to the classroom, using the hashtag and tagging DG ECHO’s Instagram account.

Our main channel for this campaign was Instagram since it is by far the most successful social media channel among the target audience at the moment. Influencers were asked to stand up for EiE by taking part in the challenge and writing a support message.

The campaign was split in three phases: the first started with the launch event on 14 May; the second phase initiated shortly after in June with the first pupils leaving on their holidays (e.g. Italy). A third phase was launched in August with students going back to school (e.g. Germany). The aim was to target youngsters when they were most likely to think about whether they would be missing school or not.

Successful digital campaigns require good hooks, good assets but also social media influencers. logos contacted 300+ influencers in 11 EU member states to invite them to take part in the campaign. Dozens of influencers responded positively and contributed to the challenge by sending their picture with a pencil. We contacted influential sportsmen, singers, Eurovision artists, actors, or fashion trendsetters.

results

In terms of asset development (output), with graphic designers and video production agencies, our creative team created the following assets:

• 40 field pictures
• 12 testimonial clips
• 5 animated graphs explaining education in Emergencies
• 3 calls to action videos
• 1 animated video explaining the campaign published on YouTube
• A 10-minute film disseminated on YouTube.

In terms of reach, with about 60+ posts and stories, the campaign received thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. In total, there were more than 16 M impressions.

• 16,4 M people reached on Instagram
• 100K+ views on YouTube
• Dozens of influencers contributed to the campaign including singers Typh Barrow and Axelle Red
• 60+ digital assets were produced and disseminated (e.g. long videos, short clips, gifs and photos)
• 11 target countries: Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom

services

digital engagement, social media management, video production, visual asset development, influencers engagement