After the terrifying bushfire season in Australia 2019/2020, over 1 billion of Australia’s unique wildlife have died. 30% of them are Koalas due to their naturally slow habit plus the rapid spread of the bushfire. Besides that, many other species are on the border of extinction.
Koalas of NYC campaign was born to raise the awareness of New York citizens around the impact of climate change on natural habitat. In January 2020, many plush koalas are attached tags sending educational messages about the endangered wildlife in Australia and calling for donations. These life-sized plush koalas then were placed in high traffic public locations of New York city center.
Cute visualisation is the key for the Koala of NYC campaign in the social media era:
Some first pictures of a plush koala in modern structures of New York city quickly went viral quickly on social media which were taken by Jeremy Cohen, a photographer-influencer. Koala, an iconic representation of Australian wildlife had never been seen amongst the high towers of New York City. It was juxtaposing imagery between a natural create and man-made concrete structures. With the support of Jeremy Cohen, this visualization was becoming popular on the Instagram platform and led more users to the IRL to take action.
WHY KOALAS?
Everybody loves cuteness, That is a scientific fact!
A recent study shows that Instagram ads that have animal photos are significantly higher engaged by users than those that don’t use animal visualization. Some psychologists state that cuteness also supports convincing someone to do something rather than amplifying the power or arguing and cuteness is good for our social life.
As we probably know Australia has a diversity of animal wildlife and the koala is one of the cutest unique animals. The campaign has chosen Koala not only because of the high percentage of deaths but also its cuteness. That is the reason why the plush koala is affectionate and connects more people with the campaign. More and more people take snaps of the cute koala in the middle of industrial cities and share it on their Instagrams.
Researchers also show that tweets and posts containing cute photos or cute contents that recall heartwarming responses are likely to be shared than others.
At the same time to spread the call to action, the campaign encourages users to hashtag #koalasofnyc and donating for Go fund me easily through simple digital elements. Users were led directly to the donate link for WIRES by scanning the QR code. The campaign gained more popularity because of celebrities’ seeds such as Katie Holmes, Jennifer Aniston, and Lewis Hamilton.
The results achieved with NO media costs of the campaign include:
More than 1.9 billion reaches
More than 9.4 million impressions
Calls to action in more than 140 cities
Donation amount exceeded by 400%
Winner of The 5th annual Shorty Awards
On the website of campaign koalasofnyc.com, people were encouraged to become an ambassador by ordering plush koalas with printed tags and were taught how to hang the koala outside. This makes people engage more with the campaign when they spend effort for it though it is in an interesting way. They not only share the cute and aesthetic snaps of koalas on their own account but also send meaningful messages to their community.
The success of the Koalas of NYC campaign has proved that cuteness might be a beneficial communication way even in the most serious subjects. People who work in the PR and communication field should consider cuteness as a potential factor that can be applied in any marketing and PR campaigns. An old but good example is the Super Bowl advertisement in 2015 that features adorable animals and gained lots of affections from audiences. Or any lately popular movies, think of the cat in Avenger Captain Marvel or Baby Yoda in Star Wars.
And once again cuteness is more and more important in life when humans nowadays look for more appearances on social media. Meanwhile, some new emerging platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram reels are used more often. They are all about imagery, videos, and of course sounds or music. Instead of uploading sexual or violent content which may also gain lots of notices, uploading cute videos and images not only avoids the banning policies but also gain a long-term good impression from audiences.
However, this campaign was based on a global event which already being concerned by a large population. Therefore, It was not too difficult to raise awareness.
Keywords: cute power, good pr campaign, cuteness viral, social media trend, potential marketing trend.