Clever campaigns.

I recently came across a story about a new Instagram sensation, whose account turned out to be nothing more than a clever campaign by a Parisian advertising agency to draw attention to how easy it is to miss the signs of, or even encourage, addiction. The account supposedly belonged to a French model, whose photos of her glamorous life attracted 50,000 followers within weeks of joining Instagram. But each photo was staged to include signs of possible alcohol addiction – a bottle poking out of a bag, a wine glass beside her, or a reference in the caption – and after a couple of months a video was posted on the model’s account coming clean and explaining the thinking and intent behind the campaign.

It’s an interesting story and it made me wonder if there might be opportunities to do something similar in the workplace. Could a campaign like this draw attention to subjects such as mental health issues, prejudice or discrimination, perhaps some health and safety topics? The Instagram example uses a social network, but the message is conveyed primarily through photos, so perhaps some kind of poster campaign could work. But more and more businesses have internal social networks now, so it would be great to see some creative uses of those for behaviour change campaigns. Perhaps there are examples already out there – I’d love to hear about them if anyone can point me towards them.