UNESCO unveils its new Global Campaign: Sharing Humanity

In early 2022, UNESCO launched a global communication campaign, to strengthen its voice and positioning within the peace and development community. This initiative was meant to reaffirm the relevance of UNESCO’s mandate, modernize, and clarify its messages and values, in the light of emerging challenges and a new development landscape.

UNESCO’s communication revamp was an integral part of an in-depth strategic transformation process, aimed at increasing relevance amongst target audiences, providing also a global narrative to convey UNESCO’s values and goals beyond the diversity of its programmes in the fields of education, science, culture, communication and information.

The new tagline “Sharing Humanity” and the corresponding campaign brings together UNESCO goodwill ambassadors and artists engaged in UNESCO’s key programme areas, adding a diversity of voices to the brand platform, and developing the meaning of UNESCO’s signature, for each of its strategic objectives.

The renovation of UNESCO’s communication approach is closely linked to the process of strategic transformation UNESCO has conducted over the past few years, under the leadership of the Director-General Audrey Azoulay, leading to an increased focus on key areas of interventions, and strengthened delivery mechanisms.

This includes the full overhaul of digital platforms, including UNESCO website, the renewal of UNESCO’s iconic “temple” logo and brand identity, and a clearer, more readable focus on 4 key strategic objectives and areas of work:

• ensure quality education for all,
• reconcile humans with the planet and with nature,
• foster scientific and technological progress in the service of humanity,
• promote respect and mutual understanding for inclusive societies.

UNESCO’s strategic transformation process touched upon all key dimensions of UNESCO’s structure, programme and budget, to achieve more efficiency and better impact, to modernize a 75 year-old institution. The revamp of UNESCO’s core message is one of the most recent examples of this sweeping change. The campaign was was made possible by the support of UNESCO’s partner, the Chinese Television Network Phoenix TV.

UNESCO’s environment, both from a communication perspective and a programme delivery aspect, has changed markedly since its inception in 1945 and UNESCO had to adapt to this constantly changing landscape.

But some things do not change, and indeed should not. And this is certainly true for UNESCO’s core values, and core principles. A key challenge was to stay faithful to UNESCO’s roots and express them in a renewed compelling manner. This was the basis on which a modernized positioning for the organization was founded, and was enriched through further internal discussion, as well as engaging with an external consultancy firm WPP, who worked on the reform of the communications service and laid the ground of a renewed brand platform.

The opening lines of UNESCO Constitution place a strong focus on human dignity, seeking to bring out the best in our shared humanity, with a view to provide not only basic elements such as food or medicine, but instead focusing on the intellectual and moral dimension of peace building: “Since wars begin in the minds of men and women, it is in the mind of men and women that the defenses of peace shall be constructed”.

For 75 years UNESCO has been the UN agency whose mandate is about fostering the human dimension of peace and development, seeking to strengthen the “intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind”. One of UNESCO’s first programmes, entitled “the book of needs”, launched in 1948, identified, among the key prerequisites of recovery in Europe after World War II, was to invest in education and culture, as basic needs, just as fundamental as housing, food or health, for the future of the continent.

Indeed, all of UNESCO’s programmes, beyond the diversity of their focus, in education, sciences, culture, information and communication, appeal to what makes humans human, as a moral and intellectual species.

Today, this rather philosophical approach gains new impetus, and new relevance in the face of emerging trends.

In the face of new questions brought by artificial intelligence or advanced robotics, we are called to redefine who we are as human beings, and what is human intelligence or creativity compared with ChatGPT; what makes us different (if anything) from robots and computers. In the face of new questions raised by climate change and biodiversity crisis, we are also called upon to rethink our relationships with nature, plants and animals, and all living beings, and to question our place on the planet, rather as custodians than as "masters and commanders".

In the face of emerging divisions and fragmented societies, including through the rise of hate speech and mis/disinformation on social media and the streets, we are increasingly forced to insist on what unites us, and assert those key principles that can foster a sense of mutual understanding, a common ground… invigorated with a renewed urgency to “build the defenses of peace” in people’s minds.

In response to these challenges, we are called upon to strengthen our own humanity, uphold human traits and emotions, be curious, creative, imaginative and kind, build bonds and bridges among peoples and cultures. The more we share, the more we thrive as a human family and the more likely we are to find the solutions of our time.

The world needs UNESCO to maintain and promote the best in our shared humanity through the sharing of ideas and solutions, guided by the moral compass of human dignity and the sense of a shared human destiny. Having spent decades promoting, preserving, and documenting humanity’s most precious heritage sites, ideas, ethical principles, UNESCO is uniquely positioned to defend and share a sense of unity of the human family, in response to contemporary challenges, and divisions.

UNESCO partnered with Rooftop, a creative company from South Africa, for the development of an updated brand strategy, implementation plan and the development content. Through an iterative and collaborative approach, UNESCO guided Rooftop’s strategy development phase to ensure an outcome that was true to the existing brand and updated vision.

While UNESCO’s vision and mission would remain consistent with the existing strategy, it was necessary to establish a new purpose and positioning. This would in turn filter down into the development of new branded content and its supporting key messaging. The catalyst for the new strategic direction was the development of a core brand concept that would be able to inspire and inform all that followed.

This core concept was built on the insight of what UNESCO has been doing during the whole of its mandate, that is, Sharing Humanity. This was based on the vision that UNESCO’s actions all serve this common goal, be it the preservation of cultural landmarks or the advocacy for quality education, it all pivots around ‘Sharing Humanity’. This also extends to the role of UNESCO’s audiences, as they share the responsibility is to continue this legacy and to play their part in Sharing Humanity. It’s only together that we can save our oceans, protect biodiversity, maintain peace, or rebuild our heritage. It’s the sum of the parts that make it happen.

A key challenge was to ensure this core concept would be translatable in all of UNESCO’s official languages, including French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian. Translation adds something a different color to the main message, for instance non Latin languages insisting more on the need to unite the whole of humanity and human populations, while Latin languages are more at ease with the notion of cultivating or bringing out the best in our human essence.

An important associated task was to clarify UNESCO’s brand platform and strengthen the understanding, including across the house, about UNESCO’s vision, mission, programme and messages. This exercise may be commonplace in private businesses or international companies, where communications budgets are much larger than in the development community, but for UNESCO this was a first.

It was also an important step towards building an internal “common culture” of UNESCO’s mandate and mission, in an organization which is driven by programme specialists and experts, in the field of education, science, culture and communication and information providing them with basic tools and communications opportunities to connect the specific of their own programme with a broader narrative and overarching message.

To complement the new strategic direction, UNESCO also took advantage of Rooftop’s design capabilities to develop an accompanying visual identity that accommodates the Sharing Humanity message to stand alongside the established UNESCO logo.

One of the key principles of the design proposal was to build on UNESCO's origins and iconic cultural assets, including from its own art collection, one of the largest collections in the UN system, as well as from its iconic building, designed by leading international architects. Shapes and forms taken from UNESCO’s legacy provided the visual alphabet of the new campaign.

These components became an integral part to making the brand more consistently recognizable across various priority areas of UNESCO’s activities, and build a unifying visual identity across all of UNESCO’s programmes.

Once the new brand direction of Sharing Humanity was established, the focus turned to the implementation of that message through various content formats. UNESCO had already established four focus areas for the organization: Biodiversity, Science and Technology, Inclusion and Respect and lastly Cultural Heritage. Another, more specific campaign would be launched on the key topic of Education.

Instead of steering a single campaign to launch the new brand direction, a more multifaceted approach was applied where individual campaigns were developed for each of the four focus areas. Each campaign featured topical key messaging centered around the concept of Sharing Humanity. Each campaign following the same artistic direction, layout and design, and tone of voice in the scripting.

This approach was highly effective since these focus areas already have large followings and UNESCO was able to tap into those conversations, add to the narrative and present innovative ideas along with the new visual identity and tagline.

The four campaigns for each focus area share some content components with a few subtle nuances to engage with different audiences. The constant thread has been the flagship ambassador videos, featuring some of UNESCO’s most prominent goodwill ambassadors such as Princess Dana Firas of Jordan, Model and activist Xueli Abbing, academy award actor Forest Whitaker, Ms Yalitza Aparicio, Jean Michel Jarre, big-wave surf world Champion Maya Gabeira, 3-Star Michelin Chef, Mauro Colagreco, as a start.

Rooftop, UNESCO’s creative partner, produced these flagship videos using a modular approach, combining stock footage relevant to the topic and “selfie-style” video narrations and voice over from the ambassadors, for the videos.

This flexible approach was efficient in the translations phase of the process as Rooftop were able to swap out different language ambassadors for various versions of the video while maintaining the authentic style of speaking into camera.

To build on these flagship videos, the campaigns also featured a suit of social media content ranging from short reel interviews to static carousels and quote cards. All content was created in line with the new design system and narrative to deliver consistent and iconic campaign imagery across the various content types.

The Sharing Humanity campaigns have seen UNESCO’s social platforms reach new records in terms of views, engagement, and the rise of account followers. The two videos on Cultural Heritage and Biodiversity became UNESCO’s most-watched videos on social media reaching total views of 16M and 33M, respectively.

Even more valuable than video views were the new account followers across social media platforms increasing by over 350 000 during the active months of the campaign. Princess Dana Firas video became the most watched and most liked UNESCO video on Instagram, whereas videos in French and Arabic channels boosted conversation and followers’ community significantly.

These results have already proven the effectiveness of the work in reaching out to the intended audience and attracting them to join UNESCO. Sharing Humanity has been a common goal for both UNESCO and its audiences, a key concept so fundamental to who we are as people, allowing us all to participate in advancing the Organization's mandate.

Mainstreaming the concept further and consistently applying it to different topical areas across the organization will further increase the relevance and impact of UNESCO’s communication work in the months and years to come.