The Brief

Our main challenge was to raise awareness for a charity effort that had never existed in Singapore before. While Movember might be popular in the US and Europe, it had no presence in Asia. We needed to introduce the charity, as well as encourage people to support it, in an already competitive charity environment. We had one month to build awareness, and to turn that awareness into meaningful support.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We used the faces of famous mustachioed men from throughout history, and showed how much difference a moustache made to their persona, and our perception of them. This tied in well with the idea that growing a moustache in the month of Movember would make a huge difference to the lives of men suffering from health issues such as prostate cancer. These faces, and the art direction that made them so visually arresting, were carried through the campaign, and made all of our communications unique and immediately recognisable.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Our ads were on every major advertising and design site within 24 hours, and websites as varied as USAToday.com, FFFFound, and over 12,000 Tumblr blogs. They made the top ten on Digg, and the front page of Reddit, where they received over 350,000 views alone. On Twitter, the work was mentioned every few seconds for over a week, with traffic for our charity website rising 5,900% overnight. In four weeks, the campaign generated funds almost equivalent to an entire year’s worth of donations. Without a media budget, for an unknown charity, the value of the media earned was over $1,380,000.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The content of our ads took famous men from history, and showed that without their iconic moustaches, they were just like anyone else. What this approach ensured was that every man who saw the ads could believe that he was just a bit of facial hair away from greatness. Further, the method that we used to seed the ads meant that they were being seen by people who were bound to share and discuss them with their friends and colleagues.