Hijacking the Hashtag

The hashtag (or # as it’s more commonly known) is more than just a silly character or symbol. It’s become a fundamental way we connect in our digital world. A cultural emblem if you will. In fact, the word itself has been added to the Oxford Dictionary, so you know it’s not going anywhere.

From Twitter and Instagram to Pinterest and Facebook, almost all social media platforms use hashtags. While they allow users to connect through their shared interests, for advertisers it’s an even more important tool used to connect with their consumers and see what they’re saying about their brand.

While hashtags are a convenient way to connect with people you wouldn’t usually talk to, a lot of  times they end up being used sarcastically. A recent example of this is the extremely popular and ironic “#firstworldproblem” tweets. Using this hashtag, people tweet about the difficulties of their every day lives, including how they hate when they leave their phone charger downstairs, or how it’s just not fair that their neighbour blocked their Wi-Fi. While many of us have heard of this, or even used the hashtag itself, most of the time we don’t consider what we’re actually making fun of.  So how do you take something we’re all familiar with and use it to spread an even stronger message?

That’s where the creative minds at the ad agency DDB come in.

Last year, DDB developed an integrated campaign for Life is Water, a charity that provides clean drinking water to underdeveloped countries around the world.  The campaign, entitled, “Hashtag Killer” attempted to end the famous “#firstworldproblem” tweets by getting people in Haiti to recite the tweets in a video. This was the first time an organization tried to end a hashtag rather than promote it. To create a bigger impact, they developed personalized messages by getting the Haitians to respond to these tweets by apologizing to the people who used the hashtag on Twitter.

The campaign was a huge success, as the video was seen by more than one million people in the first four days. Within weeks, the “#firstworldproblem” Twitter feed was flooded with people encouraging others to donate to the charity. People even started using the hashtag to express how grateful they were for what they had. Talk about a complete 180!

While the campaign was successful for a few reasons, one in particular stands out. Plain and simple, Life is Water understood their target audience. You see, they knew they wanted to get young, privileged people to become aware of the charity and donate to the cause; however, they knew that these same people wouldn’t respond to traditional advertising. They knew they had to think outside the box. By using Twitter, a platform their target audience was familiar with, they were able to take a simple hashtag and flip it around into a powerful and compelling message.

While this one campaign may not solve global water problems, it’s a prime example of how social media and a first world solution can help a third world problem.

Source: http://showcasedwork.com/hashtagKillerCampaign/