Social Media Campaigns

As previously mentioned in one of my blog posts, I am not a heavy Facebook user. Last December I remember receiving several emails from Facebook where friends were encouraging me to join a campaign. I thought nothing of the emails until my inbox began to fill with more messages. Friends were encouraging me to change my profile picture to a cartoon to support a cause. I followed instructions, but did so only to prevent my email from further influx of emails or further harassment. I wondered about the possible impact this campaign could really have on society. I went back and took a closer look at the campaign by actually reading the emails, and to see their possible impact.

The Facebook cartoon character campaign encouraged users to update their status to: “Change your FB picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal is not to see a human face on FB until Monday (Dec 6th). Join the fight against child abuse and copy and paste to your status!” The popularity of the campaign instantly caught on and within 24 hours Facebook transformed into a social network of childhood cartoons, featuring “Rugrats” or “Tom and Jerry” as your Facebook friends. The Los Angeles Times reported that one out of twenty searches on Google related to cartoon images that weekend.

While the walk down memory lane of childhood cartoons was pleasant, the effectiveness of the campaign was questionable. It was nice to see that thousands of people cared to raise awareness about child abuse, but the campaigned failed to do anything more than just that. The viral phenomenon spread through the internet and stirred awareness on some level. After all, we are still talking about it two months later. The truth of the matter is that this campaign failed in the most part to inspire people to research child abuse and create a change. How many people researched numbers for child abuse? How many Santa Clara students rallied to write a letter to a local anti abuse campaign?

People tend to supports these bandwagon trends because it the easy way to show you care and requires minimal effort. The ideal goal of the campaign was to raise awareness about child abuse, but there is no evidence to support that Facebook users are now more informed about child abuse or more likely to speak against child abuse. Had the campaign asked everyone to change their profile and donate a dollar to support anti abuse organizations, the campaign may have been more effective and raised about $100,000.

Eventually another web trend will become viral and ask for your support. This time rather than just changing your profile picture to Johnny Bravo or updating your status to the suggestive location of your purse, make an effort to become more informed and lend your support to local organizations spreading awareness. ­­­I am guilty for following a trend for the sake of not being hassled, but after searching deeper into the campaign’s purpose, I have come away understanding that campaign can have an impact if organized properly.