2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

On August 4th 2020, the fourth largest bomb in history tore Beirut apart as Lebanon was already facing a horrific economic crisis amid a global pandemic. The people of Lebanon were devastated. The Lebanese government failed to act and as a result, grassroots NGOs supported heavily by international donations were the only entities helping city and its people. In order to continue the flow of human aid and disaster relief; Lebanon needed to stay on the international radar. As a regional agency, whose own Beirut office was destroyed in the blast, we felt the need to act in solidarity and help this human catastrophe. However, as a part of our corporate policy – we could not directly solicit donations as an agency. As such, we needed to leverage our creativity and use innovative technology to ensure that humanitarian aid and support would keep flowing to the city.

Describe the strategy

It will take massive financial and humanitarian support to rebuild the city and sustain families who lost everything. In the absence of a functional government, we needed to find a way to help NGO’s on-ground and keep the global conversation on Beirut alive. Therefore, we tapped into key insights: • There are 5 million Lebanese in Lebanon and 10 to 20 million abroad. The Lebanese diaspora has historically sustained the country, with remittances making up about 40% of the national GDP. • In the weeks following the blast, the Lebanese diaspora were heavily present on Instagram to follow live on-ground news and updates and share their compassion for their country, wishing they could do more to support. Thus, we decided to partner with Instagram to create an innovation on the platform itself that could enable the Lebanese abroad to stand with their country and keep NGOs on-ground in the spotlight.

Describe the execution

To keep the conversation on Beirut going and donations flowing to on-ground NGOs, we partnered with Instagram and created the world’s first dynamic AR Instagram filter with a counter. The filter finds the user’s heart and maps a digital beating and bleeding heart over it with the Lebanese flag, together with a dynamic AR counter that automatically counts up the days since the explosion. As the counter automatically changes each day, it is useable and shareable more than just once. One month after the blast, we released the filter to reignite the international conversation on Beirut at a point where it could have waned and enabled the huge Lebanese diaspora to express their continued solidarity with their country. We released the filter via Lebanese diaspora micro-influencers, asking them to use it, share it and tag the active known and unknown Lebanese NGOs to keep awareness and donations high.

List the results

Having awareness as the main objective, the Never Forget Beirut Filter achieved sustained international awareness on Beirut with +100K total organic impressions in one month. As such, we were able to keep and grow attention on the country’s plight via Instagram. Over 70 active NGOs working on-ground post-catastrophe were tagged and put in the spotlight. The filter also achieved an increase in awareness on previously little-known NGOs working to restore damaged houses and support families that lost everything. With the Never Forget Beirut filter, we were able to leverage first-of-its-kind digital innovation to keep the global conversation on Lebanon going and help ensure that NGOs on-ground continued to receive the support they needed.