WATERisLIFE is a nonprofit organization whose aim is to bring awareness to various world problems. In 2012 they teamed up with DDB Worldwide to create a video campaign to help solve the water problems in the world. DDB is one of the top five consolidated advertising and marketing services globally. DDB reached out to WATERisLIFE and came up with the idea to transform the popular hashtag “FirstWorldProblems” into something more meaningful. The organization wanted to change the conversation on social media, primarily Twitter, from insignificant problems to real-world problems.
Their original video “anthem” consisted of people from Haiti reciting tweets that used the hashtag #FirstWorldProblem. An example in the video is a boy reading the tweet, “I hate when my leather car seats aren’t heated” the camera then zooms out to show him on a pile of rubble. This is just one of many tweets read by the Haitian people, that emphasize the disconnect between “problems” in first world countries and the life-threatening issues of third world countries. This video gained so much attention over social media, that they decided to make a response video.
The response video was more personalized. WATERisLIFE directly replied to 30 tweets that used #FirstWorldProblems. The response videos start with the camera zoning in on a specific tweet from a laptop, then they show clips of the crew traveling all the way to Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, through the impoverished country, and finally landing on Haitian resident, who then responds to the tweet. By creating a response video, WATERisLIFE gained more viewers, which meant more people to donate.
In the end, WATERisLIFE was able to drill six new wells, hand out thousands of straw and home filters, and install a water treatment plant providing over a million days of clean water to northern Haiti. In addition, they have distributed 52,000 water filters in 33 countries, repaired pumps, drilled wells, provided home filters, installed water systems, and provided school and village WASH education programs to more than 4,300 people. Even after all the good, this campaign has brought, there are still some controversies about it.
One of the larger issues people had with the videos was that the Tweets are written by DDB, and tweeted by people aware of the project. The scripted tweets made some viewers upset because they felt it was not authentic. Although this is a valid feeling, the company did this to protect Twitter users. Critics also thought the video was misleading due to the scripted responses the people of Haiti read, but the reason for these predetermined responses was not meant for genuine reactions and instead meant for the message it would get across.
In the end, this campaign did an amazing thing for people in third-world countries. Companies including: BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Mashable, BBC, Time, MTV, Forbes, and many more all praised WATERisLIFE through their news outlets. Overall, I think WATERisLIFE and DDB’s advertising purely for others, rather than advertising products to benefit themselves, made a huge impact in the advertising world and was key to their overall success.