Clickbait for social good

Creative agency, RXM Creative, are using clickbait to raise money for charity.

Clickbait is everywhere. Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith, defines it as an article that doesn’t deliver on its headline’s promise. But it could be defined more broadly as any headline that sets out to induce anger, anxiety, humor, excitement, inspiration or surprise to the extent that incites curiosity. Now creative agency, RXM Creative have started Clickbait for Good, a campaign which uses headlines to promote charitable causes.

Regular Springwise readers will be aware that this is not the first time that specific functions of the Internet have been harnessed for charitable benefit. Amongst them, a tweet auction Twitter campaign that auctioned a tweet and its followers to the highest corporate bidders.

Clickbait for Good uses clickbait titles to entice readers to read human interest stories about a charity’s success. So the title “INCREDIBLE! You’ll never believe what surfer found on a beach in Brazil” leads to a story about charity, Stoked, who teach surfing to vulnerable young people in Brazil, see article image. Creative Director at RXM Creative, Mihai Botarel recently explained the idea, “What we see is click bait usually points to trivial news and meaningless issues. We wanted to use this [tactic] but shift it onto things that really matter.”

The campaign has had a significant impact in raising awareness of the causes it has chosen to promote. How else can we exploit the digital world for social good?

Contact: – info@clickbaitforgood.org