THE SEQUEL NO ONE
WANTS TO SEE
Client - UNICEF
Deliverables: Campaign strategy, creative direction, copywriting, art direction, seven social media executions
How STORO created a bold social media campaign that made people stop scrolling and start paying attention to famine in Somalia.
In 2017, Somalia was on the brink of its second famine in six years. Over half the population was acutely food insecure. Nearly a million children were projected to be malnourished. UNICEF Somalia engaged STORO to create a social media campaign that could cut through the noise and make people feel the urgency of a crisis unfolding far from the headlines. STORO developed the strategy, creative direction, copywriting, and art direction for seven social media executions, each built around a single provocative idea designed to stop people mid-scroll.
THE CHALLENGE
Somalia was on the brink of its second famine in six years. Over half the population was acutely food insecure. Nearly a million children were projected to be malnourished. In 2011, the last time this happened, over 260,000 people died. Half of them were children.
UNICEF needed a social media campaign that could cut through. The timeline was immediate. The subject matter demanded a careful balance: bold enough to stop people scrolling, respectful enough not to exploit the people at the centre of the crisis. There were gigabytes of photographs from the ground. But no campaign framework, no unifying idea, and no way of turning a complex humanitarian emergency into something that would connect on social media.
APPROACH
The campaign was built on one creative principle: take the language people recognise from everyday life and subvert it with the reality on the ground. The gap between the two worlds did the emotional work. Executions borrowed from film posters, pop culture lists, and familiar domestic complaints, then landed each one with the weight of what was actually happening in Somalia. We chose black and white photography from UNICEF’s existing archive to strip away distraction and force viewers to connect with the human being in the frame. Every line of copy was carefully considered. We wanted to shock, but also make people think. Not patronise. Not exploit. The square format was built for Instagram. The ideas were built to travel.
IMPACT
Seven social media executions delivered on a fast turnaround.
Campaign shared hundreds of times across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Content redistributed by UNICEF national committees globally.
Contributed to both awareness and fundraising goals during the Somalia crisis.
Established STORO’s credentials in humanitarian and international development storytelling.
WHY THIS MATTERS
UN agencies face growing funding pressures and increasing scrutiny. It is more vital than ever for them to find new ways of sharing their voice and telling the stories the world needs to hear. This project showed that a bold creative approach can make people stop, feel, and respond. When the story is strong enough and the creative is brave enough, it does not matter that there is no shoot budget. What matters is the idea, the craft, and the willingness to not look away. There are so many stories like these that we hardly know exist. We felt it was an important mission for us to support, and working with UNICEF on this campaign was a real privilege.
