Christmas is the season when most Irish people get everything they ask for and yet they were still wishing for something else – a white Christmas. The people of Syria would experience a white Christmas in 2016, one filled with white dust from barrel bombs and fallen buildings rather than clean, crisp snow. We used this insight to grab Ireland’s attention during the festive season and asked them to turn their outrage into action by supporting Amnesty International in bringing the people responsible to justice.
With news outlets filled with haunting tales of trapped Syrian citizens we debuted our campaign on December 20th with a film that juxtaposed the Irish ideal of a white Christmas with a Syrian one. To capture the attention of the public we designed a social bot to trawl Instagram and Twitter for uses of #whitechristmas. Our bot liked photos and tweets from an aptly named @Syriawhitechristmas account built to act like a campaign microsite detailing the Syrian plight.
