Sometimes media is the message. This stunt could only work in movie theatre, but it is example of simple brilliance:
Insight: If you can demonstrate it, you do not need to say or show it.
This video has also gotten over 3M views, which I found interesting. The stunt is not that overboard to catch the attention, but it is easy to relate. You immediately and intuitively know that you would reach your phone for the message.
And somewhere around the world
Someone would love to have my first world problems
Kill the moon and turn out the sun
Lock your door and load your gun
Free at last now the time has come to choose
-Matthew Good Band: Omissions of Omen
I am not huge fan of advertising for charity organizations. The work tends to be either scam or too preachy for its own good. What is usually lacking in creative idea, is compensated in shock value. That is why it was refreshing to see this:
Insight: In developed countries, our (first world) problems are quite trivial compared to (real) problems in developing countries.
Behavior: Although the insight in the campaign is quite simple truism, it is the behavior of the brand what makes it stand out. #firstworldproblems was popular meme and DDB found a great way to hi-jack that meme to benefit WaterIsLife. Tweets about #firstworldproblems are ironic and at least meant to be tongue-in-cheek. With this campaign, you are forced to think at least for a while about real world problems while you are cracking jokes about your iPhone´s lousy battery. Of course it induces guilt, but isn´t that the main emotion you actually want to raise when doing advertising for charity organization?
It is tricky for brand to take advantage of existing memes. You have to know the meme upside down and then also bring new meaning to it. What was parody was turned to something serious. With this campaign, that was done perfectly. Zigging when everyone else is zagging.
Stand-Up Strategy 