2021 Winner
BronzeBest Integrated Campaign
SickKids Foundation
"One Million Strong"
OMD
"One Million Strong"
OMD
In their journey to raise $1.5 billion to build a new hospital and needing to acquire 7,000 more monthly donors, the pandemic had a profound impact on traditional sources of donations for SickKids. Fall has traditionally been a successful effort for donations, yet unpredictable lockdown measures would put more pressure on the necessity of paid media impact. Then, their biggest fundraising fear came true: full lockdown in December, wiping out any potential face to face efforts (80% of their donations source) in the Winter. With face-to-face efforts impacted, the agency needed to combine the benefits of personalization and storytelling with a data-led, digitally powered fundraising model.
Three phases were created. First, seed the need to be part of reaching One Million Donors. They started by seeding reasons for Torontonians to be part of a milestone in supporting the SickKids fight. Bravery Bead installations across the city served as the symbol of the goal to reach one million donors. A data feed was initiated and DOOH was used to track and communicate efforts in reaching the goal. Social long-form video across multiple platforms told the story of one million.
Next, inspire people to contribute. They needed to generate emotive responses through telling the stories of various life and death battles happening at SickKids. Innovative video and high impact placements are critical in garnering an emotional response, so they focused on what they knew would deliver. Capitalizing on the acceleration of video, they took advantage of holistic at-home viewing through a high-profile conventional TV schedule along with Connected TV add-on for incremental reach. SickKids aired their first-ever Super Bowl spot. Local influencers (Mary Berg and Tracy Moore) were used to share their own stories about how SickKids helped their families.
Finally, deliver the donations through super smart data and strategic work. To convert their awareness efforts, the next level of media needed to be as smart and reactive as having a face-to-face conversation. To do this, their stories needed to only reach the most qualified audiences to maximize donation potential. They did this in two ways, which were underpinned by the prerequisite that these audiences had shown interest. Believe in the need for support through conversational storytelling showing why they need a new hospital. To further explain the need, they turned to social and digital video. Knowing users are in a “discovery” mindset, these platforms were used to target and entice audiences to learn more about the cause.
They used multiple creative executions and optimized with machine learning against both reach and brand lift studies to ensure the most relevant message would come out ahead and positively impact the campaign. This would also help set the stage for building pools of users who would be the most likely donors. Act upon the urgency and become a monthly donor.
This became an easier task when all their tactics contributed to building qualified audience pools to serve “the ask”. Digital audiences who had already shown interest were targeted with hard messaging around “become a donor” or “sign up”. They identified people who had seen the campaign and created audience segments based on level of interest. They delivered lower funnel ads and optimized to engagement (eg. Twitter Retweet for reminders of next video release). They capitalized on cross-channel campaign engagement through Social, SEM and Video. Remarketing and lookalike audiences were created against all those who engaged with their exceptional content. The agency also partnered with SickKids, using their CRM lists and again, created both targeted audiences as well as lookalikes of those they knew would be most predisposed to the possibility of donating.
At the end of the day, they exceeded objectives by 79% and acquired over 12,500 monthly donors! Their SickKids optimizations continue to work as they mitigate the impact of little to no face-to-face activity. The Fall campaign saw the best overall results ever where digital contribution was +119% yoy. They completely mitigated the lockdown impact where during an historically very difficult time to fundraise (Feb/Mar), they acquired 2,400 monthly donors and digital’s contribution was +394% YoY. Fall brand metrics also continue to increase (vs. initial 2017): unaided awareness +61%;
incidence of making a donation +18%.
Three phases were created. First, seed the need to be part of reaching One Million Donors. They started by seeding reasons for Torontonians to be part of a milestone in supporting the SickKids fight. Bravery Bead installations across the city served as the symbol of the goal to reach one million donors. A data feed was initiated and DOOH was used to track and communicate efforts in reaching the goal. Social long-form video across multiple platforms told the story of one million.
Next, inspire people to contribute. They needed to generate emotive responses through telling the stories of various life and death battles happening at SickKids. Innovative video and high impact placements are critical in garnering an emotional response, so they focused on what they knew would deliver. Capitalizing on the acceleration of video, they took advantage of holistic at-home viewing through a high-profile conventional TV schedule along with Connected TV add-on for incremental reach. SickKids aired their first-ever Super Bowl spot. Local influencers (Mary Berg and Tracy Moore) were used to share their own stories about how SickKids helped their families.
Finally, deliver the donations through super smart data and strategic work. To convert their awareness efforts, the next level of media needed to be as smart and reactive as having a face-to-face conversation. To do this, their stories needed to only reach the most qualified audiences to maximize donation potential. They did this in two ways, which were underpinned by the prerequisite that these audiences had shown interest. Believe in the need for support through conversational storytelling showing why they need a new hospital. To further explain the need, they turned to social and digital video. Knowing users are in a “discovery” mindset, these platforms were used to target and entice audiences to learn more about the cause.
They used multiple creative executions and optimized with machine learning against both reach and brand lift studies to ensure the most relevant message would come out ahead and positively impact the campaign. This would also help set the stage for building pools of users who would be the most likely donors. Act upon the urgency and become a monthly donor.
This became an easier task when all their tactics contributed to building qualified audience pools to serve “the ask”. Digital audiences who had already shown interest were targeted with hard messaging around “become a donor” or “sign up”. They identified people who had seen the campaign and created audience segments based on level of interest. They delivered lower funnel ads and optimized to engagement (eg. Twitter Retweet for reminders of next video release). They capitalized on cross-channel campaign engagement through Social, SEM and Video. Remarketing and lookalike audiences were created against all those who engaged with their exceptional content. The agency also partnered with SickKids, using their CRM lists and again, created both targeted audiences as well as lookalikes of those they knew would be most predisposed to the possibility of donating.
At the end of the day, they exceeded objectives by 79% and acquired over 12,500 monthly donors! Their SickKids optimizations continue to work as they mitigate the impact of little to no face-to-face activity. The Fall campaign saw the best overall results ever where digital contribution was +119% yoy. They completely mitigated the lockdown impact where during an historically very difficult time to fundraise (Feb/Mar), they acquired 2,400 monthly donors and digital’s contribution was +394% YoY. Fall brand metrics also continue to increase (vs. initial 2017): unaided awareness +61%;
incidence of making a donation +18%.
Credits
- Laurie St. John, Group Director of Strategy, OMD- Daniel Aherne, Associate Director of Strategy, OMD
- Katie Polan, Sr. Strategist, OMD
- Kate Wallace, Strategist, OMD
- Daryl Heroux, Managing Director, OMD
- Cossette
- Citizen Relations