Put yourself in their shoes - Unicef | Clapboard Ad Archive

Put yourself in their shoes, the Unicef campaign launched in Croatia in Year by Bruketa & Zinic, is a rigorously crafted case study in narrative empathy for the public interest sector, deploying ambient media to draw passersby into an immediate emotional confrontation with social realities too often left abstract. Anchored in the core idea of symbolic substitution rather than literal depiction, the campaign’s title operates as creative directive and rallying cry, asking audiences to experience—physically and psychologically—the lived hardship of vulnerable children across the globe. By situating its sole media asset in the public domain and employing native Croatian language, Bruketa & Zinic leverages the ambient context to disrupt daily routines, putting the viewer in a state of suspended normalcy where UNICEF’s mission becomes not a distant cause but an immediate personal concern. Rather than presenting statistics or traditional calls to action, the campaign invites a shift in perspective, deploying what Clapboard’s taxonomy would identify as FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem, using metaphor and analogy to represent the scope and urgency of child welfare without recourse to direct visual representation. The campaign’s strength lies in its constructively disruptive approach: rather than hammering audiences with the familiar visual codes of distress, it opts for the psychological route, tasking viewers with the imaginative labor of empathy and in doing so, prompting internal reflection that can lead to audience-driven engagement and heightened awareness. This method eschews didacticism in favor of self-realization, positioning UNICEF not just as a benefactor to the vulnerable but as a conduit for public introspection and attitudinal change, a critical pivot for NGOs seeking relevance in cultures saturated with visual charity appeals. By creating a moment of tactile metaphor—requesting that Croatians literally stand in the physical or emotional place of a child in need—the campaign closes the empathy gap, turning ambient media’s power to surprise and unsettle into a lever for social change. The approach is radically participatory, making the solution not the provision of aid but the transformation of perspective, positioning UNICEF as a curator of social conscience rather than a mere donor. The campaign earns 64/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. When brands and agencies in the public service category harness symbolic storytelling in lived environments, as Unicef and Bruketa & Zinic do here, they signal a maturing of cause marketing that prizes personal identification over spectacle as the engine of support.