Seeking asylum is often illegal, and more often than not, brings serious risk of injury or death, as well as endangerment of life, exploitation, or violence. That’s why The United Nations’ (UN) refugee agency, UNHCR (The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), is helping millions of displaced people find safe and legal paths to escape conflict, persecution and war, as well as protection/shelter along the way.

In the lead up to World Refugee Day (Monday 20th June), Australians for UNHCR wanted to boost awareness of both the plight of refugees and the refugee assistance programs they run globally to support displaced people worldwide, and raise much needed funds.

But in order to shake people from refugee charity fatigue, we needed to lean into a political, hot button issue; boat refugees.

We needed to cut through the noise and generate conversation, and in turn, awareness and donations from the public.

To do this, we turned our attention to sea shanties, a 400-year old genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labour aboard large merchant sailing vessels. They were found mostly on British and other European ships. We wanted to give shanties, a new, powerful modern relevance, by creating the first sea shanty based on real refugee survivor stories.

The sea shanty music and community is now more popular than ever on TikTok. The hashtag #seashanty has amassed well over 3.1 billion views on TikTok, and has leapt ashore to the mainland media as well, having been featured on outlets from the BBC to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and many other traditional media outlets. But we saw an opportunity to harness its viral power, tap into a targeted online community, and use it to tell the harrowing survivor stories of real boat refugees in a bold, surprising, social-first way.

Because not all sailors want to go to sea.

We did this by partnering with Nathan Evans - the fresh, global face of sea shanty music, UK #1 artist, and TikTok megastar who has 1.3 million followers on Instagram - to co-create ‘The Reluctant Shanty’ song. A track based on in-depth interviews with five reluctant sailors: boat refugees from Iran, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. The survivor stories were painstakingly turned into a song and mini-musical video that honoured their resilience, hardship and courage, in close consultation with UNHCR.

On the eve of World Refugee Day, Nathan gave a mysterious sneak peek of the Reluctant Shanty song to his 1.6 million TikTok followers, igniting conversation about its haunting lyrics and themes. Then on World Refugee Day itself, Nathan and UNHCR simultaneously dropped the entire track and revealed its true meaning to the world.

Over the coming hours and days, without any PR or media budget, the Reluctant Shanty:

- Was viewed over 13.4+ million times on TikTok in the first week alone

- Had video view-through rates of 86% (exceeding TikTok benchmarks)

- Generated 86,000 likes on the platform

- Covered widely in local, national, and international media, the track spawned 32 unique duets by TikTok users and shanty groups from around the world.

- Championed by supermodel and global activist Helena Christensen.

Not only did the campaign gain traction within the targeted social community, users were able to dive deeper into the campaign and reveal the true stories behind the lyrics at Reluctantshanty.com, where they could also donate to UNHCR to protect refugees around the world, in a few clicks. During the campaign period, UNHCR saw 80% increase in average donation value and 40% increase in the number of donations.