Edelman

London

Sinch is a Swedish cloud communications platform offering B2B technological solutions which sit behind the texting and calling functions for clients such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Google.

Sinch needed us to increase brand awareness for them in a way that would make people feel positive about the technology they provide.

Insight

Today, nothing is as personal to us as our phones. The attachment is strong and emotional - and we're spending more and more time on them. But although we use our phones to communicate 24/7, studies show we're feeling worse mentally – not happier. Mean tweets, rude comments, hatred. All in the palm of your hand.

Strategy

When studies investigated possible links between social media and smartphone usage with poor mental health, they have showed that online negativity has a heavy role to play. This is a problem for Sinch’s big B2B clients, who are among the largest, most tech obsessed social media companies in the world

As a B2B technical solution, it's difficult to build a human connection - and yet that's what Sinch's propriety tech helps people to do, day in and day out. So what if we could leverage Sinch's platform powers to highlight the positive impacts of tech and show that it can be part of the solution, not just the problem.

Creative Solution & Execution

We created ‘Text for Humanity’, the world's first texting switchboard, where anyone can send a positive text to a stranger and receive one in return.

Launched in partnership with Mental Health America, Edelman creatives and Sinch internal tech team worked together to turn their existing text conversation bot into a switchboard.

We created a new conversational user flow and a bespoke algorithm that turned plain texts into individual artworks available to share out on social channels.

We then set up several country phone numbers so that the service would be cheap to use locally.

A curation in place ensures that only positive messages are sent through.

Text for Humanity went live just before the most depressive day of the year, Blue Monday, through media exclusives and influencers in several countries. It quickly started to grow, with close to no media spend, reaching far and wide across the globe.

The service is still live and available to anyone who wants to make a stranger somewhere in the world feel just a little bit better.

At a time when I haven't felt like much of a light in this universe, I've appreciated having Text for Humanity in my life
The Telegraph,

Business Outcome

The campaign grew organically, with close to no media spend. It was voluntarily endorsed by Stephen Fry, who shared it with his 12.7 million followers. It received mentions and stories in numerous top tier titles, including the NBC Today Show, BBC Radio and The Evening Standard, and achieved unprecedented results for Sinch.