Why is this work relevant for Media?

In period when generosity was crippled by the biggest health and economic crisis of our century – Whitelion, was able to pull off its most successful campaign ever by convincing some of Australia’s biggest brands to lend us some of their most valuable media real estate – their online homepages. On World Homeless Day, these homepages became a Whitelion donations portal; giving us the visibility to outperform the category with an ROI of 5,252%.

Background

Situation: Having undergone the biggest health and economic crisis of our century, overall generosity was unsurprisingly hindered. And with that, the charity sector experienced a dramatic 7.1% decrease in overall donations. Brief: Whitelion is a small charity that has a clear purpose: rehabilitating homeless youth. Unfortunately, 94% of overall donations are given to the most well-established charities, leaving charities like Whitelion fighting for the scraps. Social distancing regulations had stripped Whitelion of its entire fundraising calendar and with it, 70% of their annual donation’s revenue. Objectives: Our objective was simple: High impact visibility with almost zero budget. Whitelion had to plug their revenue gap to secure their long-term survival. A survival that sealed the fate of 797 at-risk teens Whitelion was actively rehabilitating.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

Over 44,000 young people have no home address, so on World Homeless Day, for 24 hours, Australia’s biggest brands donated their digital home address to raise awareness for those without a physical home address. Amidst a year of unprecedented challenges, we knew realistically there would be only one day when helping homeless youth would get proper attention. And that was World Homeless Day. So, this was our golden opportunity to activate our idea. We supplied a single line of code to all brands taking part that created a website overlay which appeared on their homepages and encouraged people to donate to help homeless youth. COVID-19 caused a massive shift to online shopping. By turning the digital shopfronts of some of Australia’s most visited brands into a donation appeal, we overshadowed the charity sector’s goliaths and ensured some of Australia’s most vulnerable people weren’t forgotten amidst the pandemic.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Whilst a slew of industries slowed down, online shopping did not. In fact, during COVID-19, online shopping surged to a record 62% year-on-year – which was five times the rate of traditional retail sales growth. Never before had brand homepages achieved this level of reach. Tapping into this trend would allow us to surpass any media reach that even the goliaths would be able to afford. Nevertheless, we knew that corporations would still be in survival mode and hyperconscious with where they utilised their budgets. So, our strategy was to make it easy for them to still help. Instead of donating money, all they needed to do was give us access to their online traffic. A day when helping homeless youth would get some proper attention: World Homeless Day.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The technology to execute was simple. A single line of code created a simple website overlay, turning Australia’s most visited homepage addresses into donation portals for Whitelion. Brands simply embedded the line of code onto their website homepage. From there we were able to sync up the total donations data on to the core Whitelion campaign page. However, getting the brands on board was anything but simple. We worked tirelessly over many months to reach out to as many brands as possible, pitching the idea and managing all their concerns about implementing a third-party code onto their websites. Eventually, over 20 brands donated their homepages to ‘No Home Address’, including: Domain, Broadsheet, Asahi, and the NBL, to name a few. With their help we obtained a reach of over 2 million, for a single fundraising initiative.

List the results (30% of vote)

Our objective: High impact visibility with almost zero budget. Our earliest indicator of success was our substantial cut-through despite limited resources. ‘No Home Address’ obtained a reach of over 2 million for a single fundraising initiative – a number we’ve never experienced before. A second success indicator was the response from everyday Aussies. Despite the financial and health pressures people were under, they still opened their hearts (and wallets) to Whitelion. In that week, we raised $273,796 – the largest figure Whitelion has ever received. In fact, we raised almost the same amount as household charity brands with multi-million-dollar budgets – like the Salvation Army – who took 6 weeks to raise $240K in their hallmark fundraiser month. From an ROI perspective, our only hard cost was the technical development. When we subtract the campaign costs ($5,116.73) from the total revenue ($273,796) this leaves us with an ROI of 5,252%.