Getting young people thinking about development

The dominant approach to development is lopsided. The rich give to the poor. It's a one-way transaction that many argue is short-sighted. As part of the European Year of Development, Bond wanted to develop a campaign targeted at Generation Y; to get young people thinking collaboratively about development. After all, a problem shared is a problem halved.

Our first challenge was to understand our audience. Working with Livity, we arranged several focus groups to better understand how Gen Y see development, and what platforms they use to interact with each other. Based on this insight, we developed #WeGotThis; a rallying cry to bring Gen Y together to tackle the big issues they've inherited, together. We produced a punchy manifesto video with a track from Rudimental to set the scene. With paid media spend, Bond promoted the video through YouTube. The video led viewers through to a website where they could find out more about the issues, discover ways to get involved, and pair up with other young people through a Twitter integration.

The YouTube video was viewed over 65,000 times, driving thousands of young people to the microsite to find out more. By creating customised GIFs, the #WeGotThis Instagram channel also picked up hundreds of followers. As part of the European Year of Development, the campaign was celebrated as playing a key part in helping to change the narrative of development for young people.