October marked, among other things, Black History Month and the final countdown to the COP26 conference. As such, we’ve seen these events and recent topical news coverage influence the tone of many new creative social media campaigns over the last four weeks.

In this edition, we’ve got plenty of new activations from social giants like TikTok and Facebook, as well as content from a number of organisations campaigning for social and environmental change such as Stamma and UN Climate Change.

For a deeper dive into social media platform innovation, head over to The Social Quarterly Report or the Social Media Platform Trends report.

Let’s get started.

TikTok: You Have To See It

TikTok, with help from Publicis Groupe’s creative collective Le Truc, has produced a new campaign which takes inspiration from its most popular videos from months past. The activation, titled ‘You Have To See It’, demonstrates how real-life stories posted to social media are often more unbelievable than fiction.

Together, a myriad of ordinary social media users, celebrities and well-known TikTok creators relay the story of a true of viral TikTok series in which a woman (@samanthartsoe) found an entire abandoned apartment hidden behind the bathroom mirror of her own.

The many conversations featured in the spot take place over dinner, at a spa, in a club and even amongst a noisy factory production line, creating humour and intrigue for both viewers who have and have not seen the original videos being discussed.

TikTok: #ThisIsBlack

To celebrate Black History Month this October, TikTok has also created a brand new in-app campaign to spotlight the talent of prominent Black voices on the platform as they become renowned names in the categories of music, acting, dance, makeup artistry and much more.

Featuring users from all corners of its Black creator community, including Dreya Mac (@dreyamac), Nife (@itsjustnifee), Benjy (@benjy_lookbook) and Ehiz Ufuah (@_ehiz), TikTok aims to highlight creativity and emphasise the huge part Black talent has played in making TikTok the platform it has become today. The content is supported by an OOH activation of the same title.

The campaign also encourages lesser known creators to raise awareness of and discussions around Black History Month and share their experiences. So far, the hashtag #ThisIsBlack has garnered nearly 60 million views on TikTok.

@benjy_lookbook

I’m part of the @tiktok_uk #ThisIsBlack campaign for Black History Month???? #learnontiktok #blackhistorymonth #blackcreators #blackvoices

♬ original sound – Hi, Benjy here!????????‍♂️????️‍????

Facebook Portal: Gold Star

Facebook has released another campaign in its series of activations surrounding its video-calling hardware, Portal, this time focusing on the connection between grandparents and grandchildren.

Portal has just begun its partnership with the charity YoungMinds, which will continue throughout the year and into 2022, which aims to underline of the importance of relationships between young people and trusted adults as part of the latter group’s mental health development.

The omnichannel campaign will run on social media, TV and OOH across the UK, with ‘hyper-local activation’ in Bournemouth, where messages from grandchildren will be shown in DOOH environments.

Police Scotland: Don’t Be That Guy

Following widely reported controversy and concerns surrounding sexual violence and misconduct among police officers and individuals in the community, Police Scotland has released a new social media campaign fronted by an attention-grabbing short.

In the video, a number of young men recall common day-to-day scenarios in which women are harassed and objectified, imploring the viewer: ‘don’t be that guy’.

It hopes that the ad will make people think twice about their attitudes towards women and speak out against these behaviours when they see them. Ultimately, the aim is to reduce sexual violence against women in Scotland and beyond as the campaign picks up traction on social media.

At the time of writing, a Tweet posted to launch the campaign, and featuring the short, has been liked more than 50,000 times and retweeted 30,500 times by Twitter users.

Stamma: Not Just One Day

To mark International Stammering Awareness Day, UK charity Stamma has created a brief film, narrated by those with the disability, which aims to raise awareness of and normalise the condition across popular media channels. It encourages those watching to sign the charity’s petition, and to share the film across social media, as it pushes for the broader representation of individuals with stammers on TV and radio.

The opening lines of the petition state, “Imagine growing up in a world where stammering voices are frequently heard on the TV and radio. Where people who stammer and those who don’t are used to hearing stammering voices and aren’t surprised by it.

“That won’t happen unless and until all our media embrace the fact that stammering voices, like different accents, need to be heard on TV and on the radio.”

The ad itself is a humourous one, as the narrator attempts to answer the question, “How is signing my name on a petition going to change anything?”. There follows a series of bizarre imagery including Prince Harry with the head of a reptilian (“It won’t stop conspiracy theories that Prince Harry is a lizard”) and a man faceplanting a loaf of sliced bread (“It won’t make stale bread any softer”). Overall, the final message is a positive, friendly and light-hearted, and puts into perspective the relatively small effort it takes to sign a petition.

UN Climate Change: #ClimateAction

UN Climate Change has launched a brand-new social media campaign across most major platforms to help bring into focus the effects of climate change on our planet and to educate its followers about past and upcoming global conferences such as COP26.

TikTok has placed the campaign front and centre of its Discover tab, saying: “Tell us how the climate crisis affects your life by joining UN Climate Change’s call for #ClimateAction and an ambitious outcome at COP26.” The hashtag has 82 million views to date on the short-form video app alone.

To get the ball rolling, UN Climate Change uploaded a video featuring UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Emtithal Mahmood, who explains why she is concerned about the climate crisis and encourages other users to Stitch the video with their own views.

Meanwhile, across other apps like Instagram and Facebook, the organisation is posting a series of charts, photographs and short, looping GIFs covering key facts about global warming, waning biodiversity and the increasing frequency of natural disasters.

@unclimatechange

Why are you worried about the #ClimateCrisis? Ahead of COP26, share your story with us ???? @refugees #ClimateAction

♬ original sound – UN Climate Change

Vienna Tourist Board: Vienna Strips on OnlyFans

Finally, the Vienna Tourist Board has taken to the most unlikely of social platforms – OnlyFans.

The organisation became exasperated by repeated incidents of other platforms like TikTok and Instagram removing its posts containing some of Vienna’s most famed and celebrated artworks because they supposedly broke nudity guidelines. According to a report from the Guardian, two of Vienna’s most prominent museums were subject to suspension or restrictions on social media apps after posting nude fine art by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki and painter Egon Schiele.

In response, the Vienna Tourist board opened an OnlyFans account, placing what it calls ‘Vienna’s 18+ content’ behind a paywall to both encourage tourists to learn more about the country’s rich artistic history and raise awareness of the censorship of art on social media.

To advertise this move, the board released an amusing video which asked questions such as, “Want to see more of Egon Schiele’s ‘unique assets’?” and “Want to know every feature of a Rubenesque woman?”.

Since the campaign went viral, the organisation said on Twitter that it had reached “millions”, and claimed it was “one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the history of [the] Vienna Tourist Board”.

That’s all for now. For more social media updates, head to The Social Quarterly Report.