#Lastselfie Campaign

Posted on by Helena Battipaglia

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched its “#LastSelfie” campaign through Snapchat starting in 2014. The organization’s objective was to raise awareness about the gradual disappearance of wildlife animals, such as tigers, orangutans and polar bears. WWF chose to use Snapchat as the medium to spread awareness for very strategic reasons. Just like the Snapchats people receive that only last a few short moments, the animals WWF is Snapchatting to its followers are in danger of only living a short while longer, before dying off the planet forever. In its short video below, the WWF brings to viewers’ attention that Snapchat in fact, “mirrors real life.”’ Bringing this to light helps bolster its main objective – that this is a real life issue, with real life animals. Only widespread awareness can help prolong the lives of these creatures.

The strategies the organization used to get the main objective across were largely successful. These strategies included educating viewers, capitalizing on what’s popular at the moment, and playing on the pathos of its viewers. What all these strategies seem to have in common is that they help leave a lasting impact on the viewer.

Firstly, educating snapchat users about the animals in each snapchat helps to establish credibility with those who are viewing them. People are far more likely to believe in your message if you are able to give them some information about the core of the issue. I believe this strategy was especially important for WWF to use. It is one thing to say some wildlife animals are going extinct, but it’s another to show them real images of the threatened animals that are specifically affected. According to an article entitled “#LastSelfie: WWF’s Brilliant Snapchat Campaign” on the website beta21, WWF even included factual information about the animals in a few of its Snapchat vidoes. Additionally, as shown below, l like the Snapchat of the panda in particular. It’s essentially getting across to users that it only takes a matter of seconds for another animal to die.

As the expression goes, knowledge is power. Proving your point with fact and awareness can only help drive your message home with viewers. That is why I believe this component of the campaign helped it become as effective as it turned out to be.

Secondly, I believe one of the best parts of this campaign was how WWF utilized the selfie– a phenomenon that is so current and popular – to help spread its message. According to a 2014 Pew Research poll, more than half of all millennials (age 18-33) have taken a selfie and shared it online (fortune.com). In order to make any message heard, I believe it is extremely important to appeal to the masses. It is critical to get on people’s level and engage with them in ways that help ensure they will listen and understand more effectively. Additionally, there’s no doubt that Snapchat is a social media platform that many young people are predominantly a part of. According to an article on emarketer.com called “Want to Reach Millennials? Say Hello to Snapchat,” as of January of this year, more than seven in ten Snapchat users is in fact a millennial. There’s no doubt that if a campaign utilizes the selfie, it will help capture the attention of young Snapchat users, therefore making them more likely to view, share and engage in the message.

Lastly, I believe its strategy of playing on the pathos of viewers was also critical for the success of this campaign. Looking at these animals’ faces close up, will undoubtedly move people in an emotional and touching way. The message WWF is spreading is an unfortunate one. This is precisely why including these kinds of close up images helps take the message even farther. It makes people feel empathetic – something organic and real. I believe once people feel this, they are far more likely to spread the message through other social media platforms, and word of mouth. The WWF actually intended for this kind of sharing to eventually occur by users taking screenshots of its Snapchats and then reposting them. Personally, I know that if a video, article or image makes me feel any kind of strong emotion, I am that much more likely to send it to friends or share it on my Facebook wall.

This campaign proved to be wildly successful. WWF communications officer Tugba Ugur said the campaign was actually extended because it attracted more attention than the organization even expected. “It also turned out to be “an online fundraising success” because donation pages were shared by the WWF and its supporters.” The website justforthis.com, run by both Snapchat and WWF, stated that the #Lastselfie snapchats were posted by 40,000 Twitter users in one week, seen by 120 million Twitter users in one week, and the organization reached its monthly target in just 3 days! The strategies described above undoubtedly contributed to its success. These are tactics all people who want to spread a message should try to utilize in some way. However, I also believe WWF’s message could have had an even greater reach if other social platforms were utilized just as much as Snapchat was. I do believe Snapchat’s concept strongly mirrors the disappearance of wildlife animals, but I also think it may have catered too much to a niche audience. The campaign’s images and hash tag did end up spreading to other social media platforms like Twitter, but I would have also featured the pictures on TV and in magazines and newspapers.

Secondly, I believe using Snapchat as a medium for spreading messages has its drawbacks because once you see an image or video, it’s gone and you can never retrieve it. Although users are able to take screenshots, people who are not on Snapchat are excluded from engaging in actual exchange of media and knowledge. For example, it was a struggle for me to retrieve different images of the snapchats from this campaign even through Twitter. I would also have loved to see the different videos they sent out, but those cannot be screen captured or saved anywhere. Once it’s played, that’s it. Snapchat recently added a feature where users can replay snapchats momentarily, so I am curious to see if the platform will evolve in other ways to make its content stay for longer. This perhaps would be more campaign friendly, but it would also largely remove what makes the platform what it is.

Overall, I think this campaign was extremely clever and well done. WWF utilized some very effective strategies, all of which are important when spreading a message through social media. I believe Snapchat as a medium for campaigning does have its difficulties. Nevertheless, after assessing the reach and success of the campaign as a whole, the campaign was still strong, far-reaching and moving.

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