A new social campaign on Chibok girls, Boko Halal (education is good), has been launched by Noah’s Ark, a creative agency. With the hashtag #Put Yourself in Their Shoes, it allows individuals to empathise with the girls and their families by uploading their faces behind a veil with a mobile image-resizing app designed by the initiator. ADEDEJI ADEMIGBUJI reports.
Noah’s Ark has embarked on another cause-marketing campaign for the Chibok girls this year. The agency’s trajectory last year with Boko Halal campaign, “Yes, We are Boko Halal”, was rejected by traditional media, perhaps, for fear of having their offices in the North attacked by the insurgents.
This time around, the agency is putting faces of President Muhammadu Buhari, his Chadian and Cameroonian counterparts, Idris Derby and Paul Biya, behind a pudah or veil, made by a mobile image-resizing app, in an attempt to deepen the campaign with the theme: #Putyourselfintheirshoes.
“Like we did to these leaders by putting them in the shoes of the missing Chibok girls and their families as a way of sharing their pains and calling other leaders to action to save them, Nigerians can also go to the app to put their faces behind the pudah, as a way of showing empathy and continue the BringBackOurGirls campaign,” said the Group Managing Director, Noah’s Ark, Mr. Lanre Adisa.
A daring effort by an advertising agency, the campaign has been archived in the Ads of The World (AoTW), the world’s largest advertising archive and community showcasing creative adverts from around the world, barely a week after it was released. It generated about 2,358 views within one week on Youtube, as at last check by The Nation on Wednesday, while conversations about the campaign continues to heighten on AdsoftheWorld.com and Youtube.
With the failure of the print media to deliver the needed impact last year, the agency has fully embraced digital media to spread the campaign. Some of the platforms are twitter, YouTube and mobile app to deepen conversation and engage various demography.
Adisa said the decision to approach the Chibok Girls issue through an advertisement campaign was borne out of the concern for the girls and their parents who, for over a year, have been in agony on the whereabouts of their children.
It would be recalled that the girls’ campaign, hashtag #BringBackOurGirls went viral last year, attracting high-profile political figures such as the First Lady of the United States (US), Mrs. Michelle Obama; former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who endorsed the social media campaign. But the conversation on social media didn’t lead to any political action.
With the new creative vigour employed by Noah’s Ark this year, Adisa believes President Buhari has put some measures in place to see that the girls are rescued, and that more still needs to be done by the international community, and especially, the corporate world in terms of sustaining the momentum and the awareness that nearly 300 souls are still missing and are somewhere out there expecting to be rescued one day.
Perhaps, this is why the agency, image-resizing that mobile app is meant to make everyone put their faces behind the pudah, like those of the three presidents-Buhari, Derby and Biya, whose countries are strategic to curbing the activities of the insurgency to show empathy for the missing girls and their families.
The three presidents have continued to share intelligence on ways to curb the activities of the insurgency just as it is expected of every Nigerian, Chadian and Cameroonian to assist the government in any capacity to save the missing girls.
However, the print campaign material is designed in three different formats. The posters show the pictures of three African presidents, Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, Idris Derby of Chad and Paul Biya of Cameroon, all wearing veils to depict the Islamic religious coloration of the crisis.
It also displays flyers where there are just figures of veils without faces, symbolising that the kidnapped girls could just be anybody’s daughter, hence the need for all to demand that something urgent be done to effect their release; while the third print material are stickers with faceless veils in black on white background.
According to the firm’s Creative Director, Bolaji Alausa, the online materials are equally potent, as the pictures paint sad reminders of the precarious situation of the girls in captivity.
One is a photograph of a traditional grinding stone with a hand grenade on it, a symbol of feminine action in limbo, while the second photograph shows a mortar with a rocket launcher in place of the pestle, also portraying what other uses some of the girls may have been put into.
Meanwhile, the agency is also involving the Muslim communities in the fight by going to popular mosques to encourage Muslim scholars to preach against terrorism. An online video campaign was designed to awaken the consciousness of the Muslim community to show more pragmatic concern on the matter. It shows a scene in a mosque where they hide the shoes Muslims usually leave behind at the mosque entrance while praying. When they finished the prayers they began to look for the shoes. It was then they were reminded of the missing girls and the need to spare some minutes in prayers for them. The import is that if we can be concerned with the loss of mere pairs of shoes, which we can buy in the market, how come the seeming apathy towards the missing of about 300 girls? Food for thought!
With 22 likes and no dislike, the Noah’s Ark cause related campaign, is hopeless but prays that the girls will return.
But the online conversations showed that the world has not forgotten the girls.
“Hashtag slacktivism didn’t work, so let’s try praying? Maybe if that doesn’t work we could try wishing on a shooting star!,” said Jebus 484 pencils on Aug 07, at 22:47. Another commentator, Keith Charnley, on Youtube campaign said: “The greatest challenge will be when the survivors eventually return to their communities – if they ever can. The Army is doing its best under good leadership. It is criminal what happened in northern Nigeria. I dread to think what the brave soldiers will find once they move on the camp or camps where the girls are held.”
Whether the campaign works or not, the truth is that all efforts to get the girls back have proved futile aft0er 486 days in captivity, but it is good that an ad agency is spending its resources to show care and concern for the girls, by calling people to action.
