#TheGreatUnfollow

This was a very spur-of-the-moment campaign I made with Ellie & Elisa, the Creature gang and the guys over at Crew, in support of the charity Choose Love.

The US Presidential election has had the whole world gripped, and no wonder. Trump has been the most controversial leader of the free world, and for the last four years has set a path of destruction, spreading misinformation and hatred across the globe.

But even if he loses the election, he’s not going away. Twitter is his most powerful tool, and he’s used it ever since he joined in 2009 to gather a following and inevitably land a chair in the Oval Office.

We wanted to help people silence him for good, so we turned his greatest weapon against him and started a simple initiative - #TheGreatUnfollow - which simply encourages the public to unfollow him. Because if no one’s listening, he can’t be heard.

Join today at www.thegreatunfollow.com

There was no spend behind the campaign, but it quickly picked up speed with many famous faces attaching themselves to the cause.

We wanted to take our campaign to the real world and make some proper noise. Unfortunately, the Four Seasons Hotel was fully booked, but taking a leaf out of Trump’s book, we think we nailed it. (With thanks to the Four Seasons Barbers & Dry Cleaners in Whitechapel).

And hey, what started off as a purely digital campaign ended up taking over the streets too, thanks to the lovely guys over at London Lites.

Swipey swipey >>

The Great Removal

The final stage of our campaign: after Trump used Twitter to rally his supporters together to riot in the Capitol, we realised unfollowing him wasn’t enough. He’d never truly disappear unless he was completely de-platformed, so we evolved into #TheGreatRemoval: a campaign to have Trump permanently removed from Twitter, silencing him once and for all. We penned an open letter to Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter, and encouraged everyone to tweet him demanding immediate action.

And it finally happened. In the late hours of 8th January 2021, Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, and indefinitely from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok. It felt good to retire our campaign, and to be a voice on the right side of history.

Bye, bye Trump. I’d say don’t let the door hit you on the way out, but really I hope it gives you a massive wallop.