Saving lives without Insta likes: All about 'The Unlikeable Posts' campaign

Which do you consider your best campaign and why? When was the campaign launched?

I would want to believe that my best is yet to come but the campaign I want to talk about is one of my most favourite so far. Right from the stage we came up with the idea, I have been super excited about this campaign, primarily because of the ways it challenges the status quo. The campaign is called “The Unlikeable Posts”. It was an exclusively Instagram campaign that we at Denstu Webchutney did for Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai last year. While most successful social media campaigns boasts of the number of likes received, The Unlikeable Posts is a set of six posts that could not be liked. The campaign rendered the most common action people take virtually, useless and encouraged people to take real action instead. It encouraged people to pledge their organs.  

The campaign was launched on August 13 last year on the National Organ Donation Day.

What did the campaign achieve for the brand? Could you also share some numbers to corroborate your claim?

In India, every year 500,000 people lose their lives waiting for organs. With a mere 0.8 donors per million, India has one of the poorest organ donation rates in the world. Organ donation is a cause dear to Jaslok Hospital and the health care provider has been working consistently to educate people about it. They run various programmes to encourage people to pledge their organs.

Vishal Sagar, Creative Director Dentsu Webchutney

We wanted to do something that would draw attention to the cause but won’t end at just that. We wanted people to act — as action is the key when it comes to organ donation. The Unlikeable Posts did just that. It not just spread awareness on the state of organ donation in India but also encouraged — in fact provoked — people to act. The campaign received a great response. The posts received 30,000 likes or rather I should say the posts deleted 30,000 likes and remained at 0 likes. It also registered a substantial increase in organ donation pledges.

 What was the key idea behind the campaign?

The key idea was very simple. There is a new wave of social media activism called Slacktivism. People believe that they can change the world by liking something. I am not against hitting the like button but definitely against simply hitting the like. We wanted to tell people that that “loking” doesn’t save lives, real actions do. We wanted to encourage people to take real action and they did.  

What was the industry response to the campaign?

The campaign was well-received. It generated quite a buzz on social media and also garnered extensive media coverage. The fact, that it actually motivated people to pledge their organs is everything for us. For me, if a campaign or an idea saves even one life, it is a success.

What were the execution challenges?

The challenges were design and tech-related. We wanted to make the posts really appealing so that people are tempted to respond to them. We did extensive research to arrive on an art style. The posts were hand-crafted and it took us some time to get them right. It was a great process for everyone involved and we all learned a lot from it.

On the tech side, we developed a bot which deleted the posts every time a like was received. The bot instantly uploaded the post on Instagram again and Instagram treated it as a new post and just like any other new post, it showed 0 likes. It might sound easy, but it was quite a journey to get it right.