Samaritans - Radar / #Samaritansradar - (2014) 2:15 (UK)

Two minutes is a tad long for anything but it's now approaching standard which is a shame, because even in this rapidly moving skillfully acted p.o.v clip, I had some time to get bored with it. The Samaritans have launched a brilliant app, that monitors your friends social media feeds to alert you when it finds signs that your friends need a little help. This is explained at the start, we're then thrown into the social fray of Justin, who has chatty girlfriends asking for help to stay at his house, and state "we need you" in regards to a bit of footie. Justin's guyfriends "need help" because they're tried to kiss a girl in the group and it's now so awkward. You realize that "help" and "need" are spoken so often, that whatever the app is doing, it can't possibly be looking for trigger words like that.

And as we all, but one, run over to stop a fight between two members of the group the brilliance of the app may dawn on the viewer. It alerts you when your friends actually need help, not when they're asking for it. Genius.

Samaritans Radar was created by digital agency Jam. It is completely free and activated in just two steps from the website www.samaritansradar.org. All alerts are sent to the subscriber’s email address directly – never to their Twitter followers - and Radar doesn’t post to Twitter on the subscriber’s behalf.

Client: Samaritans

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Rebel Mouse's picture

What do you think about the proposed legal action to get the service removed?

Dabitch's picture

It's odd that legal action will be taken to the one app that does what countless others already do, but this time in the name of helping others. Do they want to die on this hill?