Facetouchers
SNAP inc + IFRC
Issue 58 | March 2021
Agency
Happiness, an FCB Alliance
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Geoffrey Hantson Executive Creative Director Katrien Bottez Concept Creators Pieter Claeys, Roxane Schneider
Production Team
Creative Content Director Kenny Vermeulen Head of Technology Thomas Colliers Motion Remke Faber, Digital PM Kris Van Wallendael
Other Credits
Account Director Pascal Kemajou Client IRFC Melis Figanmese, Nichola Lyndsay Jones
Date
April 2020
Background
During the pandemic, the warnings were to stay at home, wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask. Equally important is do not touch your face. Every time you touch your face, you risk infection.
Yet everyone does it. Compulsively. On average every 2.6 minutes.
Idea
Millions of people in lockdown were spending many hours in video calls. Many were playing with Snap Camera lenses to make their calls slightly more entertaining.
Taking advantage of this behaviour, Facetouchers was a fun Snap Camera lens created for the Belgian Red Cross (IFRC) to show people how often they touch their faces.
Phrases such as ‘Damn I did it again’ and ‘Please stop me’ & ‘Oops again’ popped up on faces exactly where they had been touched, Facetouchers was compatible with all video call applications available: Teams, Zoom, BlueJeans, Skype, Google Hangouts and many, many more.
Results
At its highest, Facetouchers was used by over 6,000 people per day, adding up to over two million hours of video calls with the filter making it one of the most successful behaviour-change campaigns the Belgian Red Cross (IFRC) has ever run.
Our Thoughts
This campaign is nearly a year-old now but it still seems very relevant to me. Firstly, video calling has taken over our lives. Dull meetings seem duller in Zoom, somehow, so any laughs you can introduce, so much the better. Secondly, though, while vaccination programmes are under way in most countries, startling data from Reckitt Benckiser seems to suggest that standards of personal hygiene have not improved. In a global survey, only 17% of men are said to wash their hands after going to the lavatory.
In the UK it is 33%. Yuck. Even now, any idea that helps contain the virus has to be valuable.