Written by Jonas Klit Nielsen
Once in a while you see truly great campaigns –and this is one of them!
Now what is a truly great campaign in my world? It’s a campaign that has caught the essence of the time we’re living in – and right now we are living in the beginning of the Responsibility Revolution. An era where we as consumers look more at the brands responsibility profile, than on the cost of the product.
Another thing is using the media on which the campaign is rolled out the right way!
Two simple criteria, but it often looks like only a few get it right, and of course, you can disagree with my two simple criteria or just think they are too simple.
Blend The World – The Campaign.
Now to the campaign Blend The World. It’s made by a collaboration between Blend and different agencies and and artists (see all credits further down in this post).
The following is from the campaign’s site, and explains the essentials of the campaign.
‘The Blend the World community is a feet-on-the-street movement that is grounded in the belief that one (Optimistic! Inspiring! Fearless!) individual can, and does, make a world of difference.
From Baghdad to Teheran, from Afghanistan to Myanmar, there are countries and villages across the globe in need of a little help, and a whole lot of hope. Blend the World has come together to raise awareness of global hotspots, and to spread a message throughout these communities of tolerance, love, and unrelenting optimism.
We know we can’t turn global issues around with bumper stickers and happy sayings, but we can each, in our own way, shine a small light on a big problem. We are tired of negativity, bigotry, and hate. We are ready to come together to celebrate a world united by diversity and the things we have in common, not the things that tear us apart. ‘
That explains pretty much everything about the brand taking the responsibility issue to heart, and what I really like, is that it’s somewhat if not a whole lot different from the more often seen fundraising campaigns. This campaign also has a fundraising element, but it’s not the essence of the campaign.
Social Media and Involvement.
Now for the media part, they are building a ‘Blend The World’ community - and yes, they have the old school micro site (by the way, a nice simple, easy to use site), but the really cool thing is that the community is also build around all the existing social media platforms. The campaign film is on YouTube and they use Twitter and flickr. But let’s fast forward to the brilliant part: social media is about involvement, and so often you see campaigns with no or little involvement. The Blend The World campaign involves you. If you are an artist you can help by uploading a photo, your artwork, music or video to - the micro site. HELL NO! TO THE FACEBOOK page – Hell yeah! Or how about designing your own t-shirt (Blend a T-shirt) also on Facebook?
On Blendtheworld.com you can also interact, submit your statement, or vote for the statement you like. The most inspiring statements will be printed on Blend t-shirts and sold in stores around the world.
More Stuff, Credit and Follow Up.
I could go on with praises for cool involving elements in this campaign, but I think you should explore it yourself at Blendtheworld.com. Check out “Nominated a Hot spot” or “Happy stuff” – must see elements.
As mentioned in the beginning of this post, this campaign is made by an interesting collaboration between the client, artists and different agencies:
Video/Film and Concept Creation : Jokeren, We Love People, Blend A/S
Music: Art direction by Jokeren, music by Mani Spinx
Campaign Development: Blend A/S & Wallace Consulting (USA)
Website Design: Open-minded (Denmark)
BTW Product: Blend A/S
Viral Marketing: GoViral (UK & DK)
PR: ProTempore (Denmark)
All of the ideas and copy on the website came from Blend & Wallace Consulting.
Blend created all other social media- and is managing the social media and Blendtheworld.com.
There is no doubt that you in the future will see a lot more campaigns like this, a campaign with a pounding heart and a lot on it’s mind, but right now it takes a visionary client.
As a follow up to this article I will try to get an interview with the visionary person from Blend. I think there can be a lot to learn from this person for a lot of marketers. I will leave the final word of this post to the manifesto of the campaign.
The Manifesto.
“Blend the world, see what it brings
Diversity is the order of things
Turn and face a stranger with a smile
Wear your badge of life with style
Embrace your neighbors, live and let live
Always remember you are what you give
Show your heart, put flowers in a gun
Find the best in others, have some fun
For every no, there is a bigger yes
Strive for greatness, accept nothing less.
Man or woman, boy or girl,
Open yourself, Blend the World.”
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[...] October 12th I praised the campaign “Blend the World” launched by the Danish clothing designer brand Blend in our blog. It’s a truly great campaign as [...]
A great campaign? A community? they have 26 followers on Twitter and from the looks of it it is mostly people who are involved in the campaign. Sorry, you might like it, but it will never take off. They are highlighting artists? If you look at the “blend artists” it is a really boring read. There are no samples of the artists work or anything. It also was quite hard to find out what the hell the campaign was about. There was a lot of talk about change and what not, but it was not clear how exactly this was going to be achieved.
Everybody and their dogs are trying to get a piece of the social media action these days, which is fine. However, this means that people who use Twitter, Youtube and so on are getting more suspicious than ever before. For something like this to work there has to be something in there for people to actually like, and this campaign hasn’t got it. The Volkswagen theory of fun has it. That is an amazing campaign. People are sharing that one.
Dear Daniel,
First of all thanks for your comment and sharing your opinion with us.
The beauty of it all is that you have the right to disagree with me and a right to your own opinion – and that is pretty close to the essential of the Blend the World campaign ☺
However, I of course have the right to respectfully disagree.
I don’t think that a campaign is measured on how many followers you have on Twitter, you could with some twitter tools get 10.000 followers in a week, but with no relevance. I think this is a great social media campaign because it makes it possible to get involved, it creates dialog and it interacts – and remember a social media campaign is not build in two weeks.
Now I think that the Volkswagen “Theory of Fun” campaign, is also a really cool campaign, until now more a simple viral campaign, but it seems like they are opening up for a competition trying to interact – which is great. It’s a well thought campaign, and it’s a cool and important message to get people to exercise, recycle or use trashcans instead of nature. And using “Fun” to get attention on these subjects is brilliant! But don’t compare it with a campaign putting a focus on issues like freedom of speech and suppression going on in countries around the world, that’s not a fun topic – but a damm important one! So lets use the stairs, recycle and pick up the trash, but lets not forget that we are living in countries, blessed with “using the stairs / getting enough exercise” as important issues to us. Lets have the energy to also help people less fortunate.
Best / Jonas
Well, I don’t agree with you that they are putting focus on free speech. I had to search around the site to find out what they were actually doing. The only reason for me being so persistent is that I have an interest in these things. Then I finally found some poorly written artist biographies which doesn’t even show the works of the artist. That is just ridiculous. Also it begs the question: If I want to help those less fortunate in the world, would I go to a discount-clothes brand? Nope, I’d go to an NGO and maybe spend a sunday pressing doorbells or the likes. The video they produced is nearly unwatchable, and to send it to another person would be an insult. Unless they were the sort of person that enjoy watching christian television programmes. Why would I pass the video along? Why would I participate in a campaign that is not very cool, clear about what it does and has the worst campaign video I have seen for a while?
Yes, we have to disagree on it, I know
But really, maybe you like this campaign because you like the idea of what they are doing, rather than what they are actually doing? I didn’t say it was about followers on Twitter, but sure, relevant followers on Twitter is a measure. They have none, relevant nor irrelevant. I can’t see how a campaign where you are claiming to build a community cannot have its succes evaluated on how succesful they actually are at building ..well.. a community. There is no dialogue or interaction there if it doesn’t appeal to people. And I am quite sure that it won’t. But we will see if I am right about that.