World Children’s Day’s is a flagship moment for children’s rights advocacy and a key brand moment for UNICEF. Each year, we carry out a multi-channel campaign including through social media, media and events around the world. The flagship piece of content is the hero video. In 2022, World Children’s Day coincided with the kickoff of the World Cup, which was a huge draw around the world. Thus, we wanted to leverage the enormous amount of public attention on this event to draw focus to children’s rights, equity and inclusion. Our goal was to bring the inclusive message of ‘every right for every child’ to as many people as possible and make it as accessible as possible using the framing of the most popular game in the world.
The ‘One Team for Children’s Rights’ video came out of the core creative insight that in a world that is divided and polarized, not just over opinions but also over facts, people do agree on some key things – that children deserve our best, and that we need to come together for their benefit. This universality ties in with the uniting power of football – it has the power to unite people, celebrate diversity, and remind us of all that we have in common.
We worked with Vayner Media, a creative agency, to develop the concept from this insight, i.e. no matter which nation we support in the World Cup, when it comes to children's rights, we are all on the same team — there is no room for division. Every child, wherever they’re from and whatever their background and situation, deserves to be safe, protected and have the opportunities they need to thrive. Equity and inclusion are cornerstones of realizing children’s right.
For the widest possible global reach and appeal, we leveraged our partnerships with football clubs, and high profile football players who are our Goodwill Ambassadors – a diverse range of men and women. Alongside that, we wanted this video to be child-led and to feature children in a substantive way. In other words, we didn’t want just a celebrity video, but a strong child rights video with children at the forefront. We worked together with 5 UNICEF Country Offices – Argentina, Bangladesh, China, Cote D’Ivoire and Vietnam, to film with amazing children’s teams that included a girls’ team, children with disabilities, and children from every continent.
Thus, we showcased strong children’s voices supported by football stars David Beckham, Sergio Ramos, Robert Lewandowski, Achraf Hakimi, Wang Shuang, Alex Scott, Andriy Shevchenko, Cafu, Carli Lloyd and Anita Asante. We made the piece as international and as accessible as possible - it had 9 languages spoken in it and final versions were delivered in Arabic, English, Chinese, French, Spanish and International Sign Language versions and published on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter and our website, as well as shown in major outdoor locations around the world.
