Five of our favourite campaigns for positive change

The marketing world is a powerful tool to promote positive change and drive social impact. It is not only an outlet to share information and raise awareness, but it’s also a space to encourage users to act and be part of change.

In a time when social media can be a dark and dangerous environment, especially for young and vulnerable people, we’d like to share our top five campaigns that have used the internet and social media to drive positive change on issues from hate speak and sexism to diversity.

Black Lives Matter, #BlackLoveLetters 

Black Lives Matter have launched #BlackLoveLetters which is a campaign in which black parents are encouraged to write love letters to their children to show how much love matters.

Not only does this campaign raise aware and support change with Black Lives Matter, but it’s also asking people to support the US Postal Service and to embrace love, connection and beauty in hard times. This campaign is multi-purpose and effective as it invites viewers to create and share Black Love Letters.

Dove, Real Cost of Beauty

Dove have really gone all out with this campaign, creating a landing page and video assets to highlight toxic beauty standards and how they affect young people. They are calling this issue a silent public health crisis, with 66 million people being met with appearance-based discrimination.

Their campaign aims to highlight this issue, bring it out in to the open, bring more eyes onto this issue and help to work towards a solution.

Me Too Movement: #MeToo

This is another massive movement and campaign. Fighting against sexual violence, the #MeToo movement is dedicated to creating pathways for healing, justice, action and leadership. This hashtag took social media by storm and is still popular, seeing a community of survivor’s band together to share their experiences and their hope.

This campaign has not only spread across social media, but also into the workplace and into Hollywood. There’s definitely still a way to go, but it’s impossible to ignore the strides this campaign has already made.

Channel 4’s Together Against Hate

Channel 4 has used their Together Against Hate campaign to fight the online abuse faced by the people in their advertising. They are asking people if face to face abuse like this isn’t tolerated, then why is it okay on social media?

The hate and negativity that adverts on their channel have provoked is shocking and ranges from homophobia to racisms and ableism. This campaign took off when influencers came together to share their experiences of online abuse, with the hope to raise more awareness and stop the onslaught of hate speech.

Always, #LikeAGirl

The phrase "you do that like a girl" has always been used as an insult, but sanitary health brand Always decided to change that. Their goal is to encourage young girls to embrace and celebrate who they are, own their failures, build their confidence and encourage them to keep going #LikeAGirl. They want people to share their own experiences of instances where they've failed but kept going, to inspire others to be able to do the same.

This is a great campaign as it’s all about reclaiming a sexist term, educating young girls and boosting the confidence of women and girls everywhere.

There is undoubtedly a dark underbelly to social media and the digital world, but there are countless campaigns for positive change that are striving to make a real difference to society.

These campaigns have not only raised awareness on important issues but have also inspired people to act and make a change. The campaigns all demonstrate the power of collective action and the ability of ordinary people to create meaningful change through the power of social media. We hope these examples inspire you to get involved in making our world a better place, too.