What are some of philanthropic UNICEF activities?

Today the Unicef website is forcing users to watch a 2 minute video before accessing the website. What do you think?

• There's no skip button - you have to watch this video. This would normally be a massive UX red flag, but Unicef are using it as a campaign technique. What do other UX and web designers think? Good idea? Fundamentally wrong? Will it work? http://www.unicef.org

• Answer:

  It's no more wrong than video platforms that force users to view an ad before the featured content, and it's arguably much less intrusive than persistent banner ads present in many apps and sites. The "forced" video is only shown on your first visit during the campaign. So if you simply refresh the browser (at any point), you can get out of it. If this were an ad for a new line of Nikes or a movie trailer, then it might rub people the wrong way. But considering the actual content of the video and the primary mission of UNICEF and its site, I think it's perfectly acceptable and a very effective strategy, albeit not one that you can deploy for very long or more than once, and it's obviously not appropriate for most marketing campaigns, but this is no different than the SOPA protest blackout, just on a smaller scale. In advertising, you're always trying to show the user something besides what they're looking for. So in a way, advertising is always contrary to good UX. The more creative/entertaining you can be with your advertising, the less it feels like you're trying to shove your message down their throat, but you're still "in their way" so to speak. However, I think this campaign is perfectly in line with the urgency and gravity of the message.