'Hugging It Out' Across the Globe
Two guys reached out and touched people over the Internet.
Aug. 14, 2007 — -- The meaning of a hug is understood universally. Maybe that is why one Internet video, the "Free Hugs Campaign," has been viewed by more than 17 million people, and has inspired several imitations on the Web.
But what few know is the success story behind the video, and how the song "All the Same" launched a Sydney band into cyberstardom.
The "Free Hugs Campaign" is a popular video that started in Australia as collaboration between Juan Mann, a local who had just broken up with his fiancée and was down on his luck, and Shimone Moore, a lead singer in a rather unknown band at the time, the Sick Puppies, who was saving up money to move to America to pursue his music career.
"One of the jobs that I had saving up my share of the money was this sandwich board that would advertise half-price shoes, and I would hold this board up for four hours a day, and I'd sit there and I'd read books, and I would write lyrics, and I would just, that is what I would do," Moore recalled.
While Moore was working in the mall, he ended up meeting Juan Mann, who was also carrying a sign, advertising "Free Hugs."
"I felt a little bit down and I felt like I had to do something a little inspiring to make myself smile and do something good for someone else," Mann said, "so, I went and got a piece of cardboard and wrote the words free hugs on it and went out into the Pitt Street mall in Sydney and offered a stranger a free hug. It's been a pretty amazing journey ever since."
Mann would stand for 15 minutes in the middle of a busy thoroughfare in Sydney, waiting. Then slowly complete strangers approached and hugged him.
"[Moore] came up to me one day and said, 'Hey, what you're doing is great, has anyone filmed a documentary about you or anything?' I said no," Mann said. "He went and borrowed his dad's video camera and the next week started filming what was going on around me. That was about the point in time when the council [police] stepped in and said, 'Wait a minute, you haven't got permission to be here.' It was in the right place at the right time."
