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Save The Children's Gaza ceasefire petition delivers over 100,000 text responses to Downing Street

Save The Children captured the public's imagination this weekend with a text based appeal to take action and put pressure on decision-makers to do everything in their power to end the violence in Gaza.

The appeal, carried in half and full page ads under the copyline 'Stop the suffering', ran in The Guardian, Daily Mail and Sunday Times amongst others. The campaign carries the following call to action: text CEASEFIRE to 81819.

Real-time reporting shows the appeal generated 115,000 responses across three days. Responses were received regardless of the time of day, and the campaign spread virally.

Across all press titles, the cost per response was a few pennies. Save the Children now plans to publicise the huge level of support in order to request that politicians everywhere push for a ceasefire.

Based on the success of the first SMS campaign Save The Children sent a follow up SMS carrying the message "Save The Children is taking 115k CEASEFIRE requests 2 Downing St @ 3pm today. We need more. Pls ask your friends to txt CEASEFIRE to 81819".

The campaign was planned by Carat. The mobile response was run by mobile marketing agency Incentivated

Mobile is becoming a mainstream communication channel to galvanise public support for small businesses, multinationals, public sector organizations and charities. The Presidential election campaign which swept Barack Obama to victory in November 2008 appealed to supporters.

Adrian Lovett, Save the Children's Director of Campaigns, said:

This is an unprecedented response and the message from our text campaign is loud and clear - the British public want an end to the bombing in Gaza. A huge number of the British public care what is happening in Gaza and have taken action. Politicians are well aware of those messages and we will continue to ensure their voices are heard. Right now the fighting is still going on and one child dies in Gaza every three hours. Public support can and must make a change.

Robert Thurner, Commercial Director at Incentivated, comments:

This campaign proves the ubiquity and popularity of text as an immediate activation channel to traditional media which people respond to 24/7, regardless of their location. It also proves the power of mobile as a viral marketing channel. In this digital age, mobile is unique in allowing us to support the issues which effect us, and to spread the word among others with similar beliefs