2014 Bronze Best Customer Acquisition Campaign

Client UNICEF UK

How did the campaign make a difference? UNICEF had a challenge after their 2013 DMA Award-winning emergency campaigns: how to counteract compassion fatigue and keep people engaged and donating.

To turn a brilliant short-term emergency response campaign into a sustained, dependable revenue stream, UNICEF used its assets – government, celebrities and knowledge from the field – alongside a strategy of real-time media planning, buying and messaging using a broadcast medium. This had been done on single days before – but not continuously for nine months.

The campaign actually exceeded the results of the previous year – generating more donations and much higher ROI to support meaningful assistance to refugees fleeing conflict in Syria and the people of the Philippines after the Typhoon in November 2013.

Strategy Analysis of the 2013 campaign showed that spots in news programmes generated higher response rates than other airtime.

So UNICEF formed a strategy to harness the power of the news cycle. It used its presence in the field, partners and online news monitoring to predict opportunities – changing ad copy in real-time to reflect relevant breaking news stories. It developed an intelligence gathering, decision making and investment deployment process to deliver this strategy – and set up deals with media owners to buy at 24 (or even five) hours’ notice.

UNICEF then tapped into the power of celebrity to win cutthrough, authority and attention. In a hot summer, James Nesbitt asked for help to provide water in refugee camps. As the weather cooled, Ewan McGregor asked for blankets to keep refugees warm in a desert winter. Meanwhile, UNICEF worked with the British government to maximize impact.

Creativity UNICEF’s strategy required blended the news cycle, media selection and copy tailoring to create bigger impact.

For example, as news broke that the number of child refugees from Syria had surpassed a million, the charity already had a new version of their current ad waiting in the wings – and could instantly launch a news spot planned and bought only five hours before transmission. When the Philippines typhoon took over the news, UNICEF reacted with a commercial shot within 10 days of the disaster. And as Syria returned to the news, a relevant winter appeal was immediately deployed. To reduce wear-out and extend campaign life, UNICEF mimicked the news cycle with a sequential set of its own stories – rotating celebrity spokespeople and asks.

Outbound call scripts used topics introduced by TV ads to turn initial cash asks into regular giving – for example, the need to provide teachers to refugee children.

Results Most emergency campaigns decline in efficiency over time and rarely run for more than a month, even if the emergency continues. This campaign has now run continuously since January 2013.

The change of copy when the child refugee number hit a million drove gross response up 34% and conversion to regular giving up 19%. Rotation of celebrity spokespersons helped increase response by 84%. The campaign in total generated 375,338 donations from 333,603 unique individuals, with ROI up a staggering 44% from the previous year’s DMA-winning appeal.

Donations through the campaign have paid for enough blankets to keep 22% of Syria’s 1.5 million child refugees warm and 21,710 donations were made to help the people of the Philippines after the Typhoon in November 2013.