To bring attention to and raise funds for refugees, Australians for UNCHR partnered with a popular TikToker to create a sea shanty that used the real-life stories of five asylum seekers as inspiration for its lyrics.
Objective:
Seeking asylum is often illegal, and — more often than not — brings serious risk of injury or death, as well as endangerment of life, exploitation, or violence. That's why The United Nations' (UN) refugee agency, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is on the ground, helping millions of displaced people find safe and legal paths to escape conflict, persecution, and war, as well as protection and shelter while they migrate.
In the lead up to World Refugee Day, Australians for UNHCR wanted to boost awareness of both the plight of refugees and the refugee assistance programs the organization runs globally to support displaced people worldwide and raise much needed funds.
But, in order to shake people from refugee charity fatigue, Australians for UNHCR needed to lean into a hot button political issue: boat refugees.
Target Audience:
Sea shanty music is now more popular than ever on TikTok. The hashtag #seashanty has amassed well over 3.1 billion views on the platform. The trend has gained so much momentum that prominent media like the BBC, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and many others have covered it.
Recognizing this trend, Australians for UNHCR designed a campaign to be tailored to this niche audience of sea shanty lovers, understanding that by engaging this community the organization could generate earned media in a country in which boat refugees are a hot button issue. This was an opportunity to harness the viral power of sea shanties and tap into a targeted online community to tell the harrowing survivor stories of real boat refugees in a bold, surprising, social-first way.
Creative Strategy:
Sea shanties are a 400-year-old genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large merchant sailing vessels. They were found mostly on British and other European ships. Australians for UNHCR wanted to give shanties a new, powerful, and modern relevance by creating the first sea shanty based on real refugee survivor stories. Because not all sailors want to go to sea. Thus, "The Reluctant Shanty" was written.
Context:
Though "The Reluctant Shanty" continued to receive engagement on TikTok a year after its release — thanks to the medium's duet feature — the targeted campaign period was solely World Refugee Day.
Overall Campaign Execution:
Australians for UNHCR partnered with Nathan Evans — the global face of sea shanty music, a No. 1 artist in the UK, and a TikTok star — to co-create "The Reluctant Shanty" song. The track was based on in-depth interviews with five reluctant sailors: boat refugees from Iran, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. In close consultation with UNHCR, the survivor stories were turned into a shanty, with an accompanying music video that honored the resilience, hardship, and courage of the survivors.
On the eve of World Refugee Day, Nathan gave a mysterious sneak peek of the song to his 1.6 million TikTok followers, igniting conversation about its haunting lyrics and themes. Then, on World Refugee Day, Nathan and Australians for UNHCR simultaneously dropped the entire track and revealed its true meaning to the world. This was executed with no paid media.
Mobile Execution:
Rather than run traditional ads showing refugees in peril and asking for donations, the campaign leveraged the power of a TikTok trend to inject UNHCR into popular culture in an incredibly real, raw, and effective way.
To increase reach, following the song's release, it duetted by real refugee survivors, showing them confronting recreations of their own real-life story, singing along to the shanty. This leveraged the duet functionality on TikTok, something that the community often relies on to co-create content.
TikTok, of course, is a mobile-first platform, so the entire campaign was considered mobile-friendly.
Without any PR efforts or budget for paid media, the Reluctant Shanty:
Not only did the campaign gain traction within the targeted social community, users were able to dive deeper into the campaign and reveal the true stories behind the lyrics at Reluctantshanty.com, where they could also donate to UNHCR to protect refugees around the world with just a few clicks. During the campaign period UNHCR saw an 80 percent increase in average donation value and a 40 percent increase in the number of donations.
