00:00 Thank you to the Hollywood Press,
00:02 uh,
00:02 Foreign Press Association and,
00:03 and World Bank for actually inviting us to this opportunity.
00:07 I think
00:09 In New York,
00:09 people look at the United Nations and they see this glass building on
00:12 First Avenue and they imagine the diplomats inside and what they're doing.
00:16 The UN is much,
00:17 much more than that.
00:18 The UN is everywhere in the world.
00:20 We are also in
00:22 the form of the normative
00:24 rules that become laws in many countries and regulations that enable us to live
00:29 in,
00:29 in a world that is interconnected with multiple problems and challenges.
00:33 So how do we communicate that to the world
00:36 without using the language of the resolutions which
00:39 are written in what we call UNES?
00:42 And
00:42 growing up,
00:43 for me,
00:44 television was a window into the world.
00:46 I learned English from television.
00:48 I went to a school run by the United Nations as a refugee.
00:51 So for me,
00:52 my work for the last 10 years sort of brings the two together.
00:56 It's,
00:56 it's uh,
00:57 it's the enable the opportunity to reach a wider audience
01:01 other than just the journalists that we talk to and we
01:04 share stories with,
01:05 we hold press conferences,
01:06 we still do all that.
01:08 But what I have been involved with directly in the last 10 years at the UN is
01:13 how do we bring the UN and what happens in the UN,
01:16 the stories from the UN,
01:18 the concept and the principles to the widest possible audience,
01:21 not
01:22 as a direct advertising,
01:24 not as,
01:25 you know,
01:25 this is what we We are telling you because we are the United Nations,
01:27 this is what world leaders have agreed to know,
01:29 through soft messaging in a way that is more engaging,
01:32 that,
01:33 that will actually,
01:34 uh,
01:35 and,
01:35 and most recently we,
01:36 we recognize that the way to really change behavior
01:40 and change people's minds
01:42 is through stories.
01:44 Numbers
01:45 are important,
01:46 of course,
01:47 for economists uh like Victor,
01:49 and others,
01:51 you,
01:51 you deal with numbers and,
01:52 and you will want to look at the numbers,
01:54 but if you want to reach the average person and you want to change behavior,
01:58 we have to go
01:59 with the storyline,
02:00 with the humanization of the concept.
02:03 So we go beyond just actually working with celebrities,
02:06 that's how the UN started working with entertainment,
02:10 and UNICEF was the first to,
02:11 uh,
02:12 you know,
02:12 work with
02:13 goodwill ambassadors
02:14 and using
02:16 their ability to spot,
02:17 to bring a spotlight on an issue to,
02:19 to make it much wider and more global.
02:22 We have been working with television and film productions to
02:26 incorporate issues that are on the UN's agenda in their stories.
02:29 And in a way,
02:30 if and when there is an item on the UN's agenda
02:34 or a,
02:35 a UN
02:36 storyline isn't there that it's accurate,
02:38 it's correct,
02:40 that we connect them with the right experts.
02:42 We actually have been to Hollywood several times,
02:45 uh,
02:45 with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
02:47 We have an initiative called the Creative Community Outreach Initiative
02:51 where
02:51 we offer sort of a film office service.
02:55 So if you want to
02:57 Do a story that engages or needs filming in a UN setting.
03:01 We are here to help.
03:03 We organize
03:04 discussions and film screenings at the United Nations
03:08 whereby a film that we may have cooperated with it or may not,
03:12 but
03:13 is about a topic that we are really engaged.
03:16 With
03:17 globally,
03:18 and we
03:18 have the discussion with the director,
03:20 producers,
03:21 and others.
03:22 We have put and placed UN experts in
03:26 writers' rooms
03:27 to actually ensure that when a storyline
03:30 is about,
03:31 there was,
03:32 there was a show called Revolution,
03:33 uh,
03:34 NBC JJ Abrams,
03:36 uh,
03:36 Bad Robot,
03:38 about a post-apocalyptic
03:40 future,
03:40 uh,
03:40 no electricity,
03:41 etc.
03:42 etc.
03:43 and we have worked with the production.
03:45 To ensure that
03:46 when they talk about refugees,
03:48 and then we have UNHCR colleagues talking to them about how it is in a refugee camp,
03:53 when they talk about warlords,
03:54 they talk about the return of disease
03:57 in such a world,
03:58 we bring experts from WHO and experts from other places.
04:00 So that's
04:01 what we have been doing a lot of,
04:03 and
04:04 we recognize that audiences are diverse.
04:07 Today,
04:07 with the sustainable Development Goals agenda,
04:09 it touches on every aspect of life,
04:12 and there is actually interest,
04:14 as well,
04:15 uh,
04:16 of interest in the SDGs
04:18 and that has been
04:19 uh very useful for us to
04:21 really find
04:23 more receptive ears.
04:24 I remember one of my first
04:26 trips to,
04:27 uh,
04:27 Hollywood with the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,
04:29 and we had a meeting with
04:31 major production,
04:32 uh,
04:32 producers,
04:33 writers,
04:34 and one of them stood up and said,
04:37 You know,
04:37 we really try to bring those issues to the shows that we make,
04:41 but then the people with the money tell us.
04:45 You're too earnest,
04:46 this won't sell,
04:47 and,
04:48 or this isn't,
04:49 doesn't really work for an American audience,
04:51 where's the American angle because this is where our market is,
04:54 uh,
04:55 and,
04:55 and,
04:55 and I think
04:56 slowly with the SDGs,
04:57 it's been more,
04:59 and of course we now we live in a world which is facing multiple crises,
05:03 so climate change is no longer,
05:05 uh,
05:05 a discussion between
05:07 People who believe in climate change and deniers,
05:09 deniers are finding other ways to,
05:11 to push it further down the line either through doubt or deflection or whichever.
05:16 Uh,
05:16 we have COVID,
05:17 we have worked a lot on,
05:18 on,
05:19 on
05:19 creating
05:20 better understanding
05:22 and changing behavior in how people share information
05:25 and with that,
05:26 of course,
05:26 we relied on
05:28 our
05:28 celebrity
05:29 partners to amplify the messaging further
05:32 and we see examples of that all the time
05:35 when
05:36 You go to the UN YouTube channel,
05:38 uh,
05:38 you will find that we have
05:42 On average,
05:42 a few 1000 views of a certain speech by a certain diplomat,
05:47 or sometimes it goes up if it's a diplomat from a certain country,
05:50 large population,
05:51 a contentious issue,
05:52 it goes up.
05:53 But when,
05:54 uh,
05:54 when you have,
05:55 uh,
05:55 Leonardo DiCaprio,
05:56 he came and spoke in the
05:57 climate change summit in 2014.
06:00 It was the first time that
06:02 we,
06:03 we have like 3.9 million views of a
06:06 UN YouTube
06:08 video
06:09 and since then,
06:09 of course,
06:10 we have had more,
06:11 uh,
06:11 especially with BTS.
06:14 Last year we had about 70 million views on the UN YouTube,
06:17 which is the highest we have ever had.
06:19 So these are the kinds of things that we have been doing.
06:22 As well as,
06:23 you know,
06:23 uh,
06:25 One of the biggest and most successful
06:27 collaborations we've had was with Angry Birds.
06:29 The people singing Angry Birds and the United Nations?
06:31 Well,
06:31 yes,
06:31 Angry Birds,
06:33 because we have started the collaboration with Sonny,
06:35 uh,
06:35 Sony Music,
06:36 well,
06:36 Sunny Entertainment,
06:37 and they came to us and saying,
06:39 we have this film coming up,
06:40 and it's about Angry Birds.
06:42 How can we work?
06:42 Because we think we are,
06:43 we want to
06:44 be helpful in the issue in the field of sustainability.
06:47 So the
06:47 theme was,
06:48 and they produced many
06:50 short clips of Angry Birds,
06:52 they're angry because humans have messed up,
06:54 you know,
06:54 we have to
06:55 sort things out,
06:56 we have to clean up,
06:57 uh,
06:57 behind us,
06:58 less plastic,
06:59 uh,
07:00 conserve energy,
07:01 and,
07:01 and,
07:01 and then since then we have had collaborations with the Smurfs,
07:04 with the
07:06 Peter Rabbit,
07:07 Hello Kitty,
07:08 uh,
07:09 Thomas the Tank Engine,
07:10 and it's like also,
07:12 so we're going to the younger generation,
07:14 so that those issues are really reaching to them in a way that
07:18 is told.
07:20 By storytelling experts,
07:22 not just us.
07:23 So we bring the expertise,
07:25 we bring the issues,
07:26 but we rely on the storytelling expertise of
07:30 Not just Hollywood,
07:31 of course,
07:31 we have worked with Bollywood and,
07:32 and,
07:33 and other European and hopefully
07:35 we haven't yet,
07:36 but uh our target is also to work with Nollywood as well.
07:39 So,
07:39 um I'll stop here.
07:44 Thank you,
07:45 Majer.
07:45 Uh,
07:46 indeed,
07:46 very,
07:46 very interesting.
07:48 Um,
07:48 also,
07:49 I like,
07:50 uh,
07:50 you know,
07:51 the,
07:51 the successes are really inspiring,
07:53 but also the constraint that you point to.
07:56 I'm going to
07:57 revert that question later to our,
07:59 um,
08:00 uh,
08:01 panel and specifically people in the entertainment industry
08:05 to understand how do we do this right?
08:07 How do we get the content right?
08:09 And uh
08:11 so that it,
08:11 it is both attractive
08:13 to our market
08:14 but also communicative of what we need to communicate.
08:18 So this is really uh wonderful.
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