BACKGROUND

Following submissions from the UK’s top agencies, VMLY&R was selected as the winning team for last year's Snapchat Creative Council project brief. As part of the prize, the agency’s campaign has been professionally produced for Snapchat and is supported with media.

CHALLENGE

2020 saw massive changes to our society - from a global pandemic turning our everyday lives upside down, to the era-defying events across the US started by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police. These events, plus a spotlight shone on the climate crisis, triggered mass protests across the globe, with high proportions of younger generations stepping out, looking for a way to express their opinions and be listened to. 

Our brief for this project focused on driving progress to close the equality gap by providing resources to minority communities through Snapchat’s unique communication capabilities. The core ask was for us to leverage Snapchat’s core ad products to raise awareness around voter registration to allow young people’s voices to be heard in the UK’s upcoming election and beyond. To inspire the next generation of Snapchatters to identify as voters and feel empowered to be changemakers.

SOLUTION

Speech to Street was the first Campaign to be awarded by the Snapchat Creative Council - an industry body formed in September 2020 in partnership with Creative Equals. The group of leading UK creatives were tasked with building bridges between industry and Snapchatters with an initial focus on mental health and civic duty amongst Gen Z and Millenials. 

Our Speech to Street campaign was centred around a Snapchat lens that encouraged Gen Z users to use their voice and make a choice to vote in the 2021 UK local elections. We commissioned Opinium research to discover the issues that matter the most to the next generation of UK voters and found that Mental health (40%) was the number one priority, followed by NHS Healthcare availability (27%), wages and the cost of living (26%), poverty and homelessness (25%) and jobs (24%).

We built these learnings into an Augmented Reality lens experience that was designed to give a political platform to Generation Z in a way no one has done before. The campaign, which was built by Snapchat’s developers and supported with media activations, encouraged Gen Z voters to openly voice their opinions around key political issues. The work underlines the role of AR as a tool for self-expression and cuts through the stereotypes that surround young people’s use of social media. 

Results

With a £100,000 production and media budget, we achieved 50million total impressions. Our AR lens produced 6.1 million impressions, while our video content saw 42 million impressions. A huge achievement considering the lens only targeted a small portion of the UK population, our 18-24-year-old Gen Z voters. 

“Young people have been once of the hardest-hit groups during the pandemic” Currently they are struggling in terms of mental health, long-term job prospects and engagement with education. Now, more than ever, they need to have their voices heard, valued and respected within the political arena’ - Ali Hanan - CEO, Creative Equals