2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

As part of GE’s commitment to creating better health for more people, our challenge was to get women in Saudi Arabia to sign up and support the nation's first mobile breast screening drive in Riyadh. Many women in Saudi Arabia are hesitant to take part in a cancer related conversation. Social taboo meant engagement around this issue was near impossible. We had to find a way to overcome these barriers by making breast cancer less threatening. And to do this, we tapped into Saudi Arabia’s popular ‘avatar’ culture on social media. Saudi women in particular use avatars to represent themselves, or their opinions and emotions. Avatar for Action is a social media led campaign that took this convention and turned it into a vehicle for a social cause.

Creative Execution

GE’s Avatar for Action launched with a Facebook application that offered a simple, non-threatening way to empower women to create change in their community. Saudi women could design their avatars, choose positive cause messages, and share them across their social networks and blogs, in safe anonymity. For the first time women could invite their peers to sign up for a screening or discuss the issue without societal concerns. The application also generated in real-time a parade of these avatars, as a symbol of hope. The virtual avatar parade not only showed users creating avatars and messages in real-time, but was embedded to blogs and integrated into the screening launch event. At the launch, attendees could view the parade, and design their own Avatar on touch-screen displays. In seconds, they would see themselves dynamically appear on the screen as part of the parade.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

As more people shared their avatar, the community grew exponentially. In just over a month, the GE Facebook page soon became a daily hub of support, discussions, and information. The app received an average of 40 likes per day and 35 comments per post. Over 1200 questions around breast cancer were logged. And over 8000 women created avatars and messages of hope, supporting the screening drive.