The Campaign

The “Dreams Never Get Old” campaign is just one of the elderly campaigns in Taiwan to raise money for elderly care. Most of elderly charity foundations raise donations by addressing the physical needs of the elders in a pessimistic and negative tone to intrigue the donors’ sympathy to take action. These traditional techniques may work sometimes but only reiterate the publics negative perceptions of the elderly as a group of people that consume societal resources. What makes the “Dreams Never Get Old” campaign special is that it’s the first elderly campaign to actually convince donors to be more charitable by emphasizing elder’s spiritual needs in optimistic and positive tones. The most notable accomplishment for this campaign is that we successfully invoked the president’s response towards elderly care besides achieving our pre-set objectives in optimistic positive ways by changing the public’s perception. Thus making our campaign worthy to win in this category. Our post campaign survey indicated that 91% of our respondents had successfully changed their negative beliefs. The total charity donations increased by 24% compared to the previous year from US$192,825 to US$238,846. The most notable accomplishment of this campaign was the invitation by Taiwan’s President to the welfare foundation’s CEO to discuss current senior citizen social welfare issues. In addition, we generated earned media worth over US$3.5 million with accumulated reach of 40,716,900 and even attracted an American reporter and director for the Discovery Channel, Peter Starr, who arrived to witness the elders chase their dreams by riding motorcycles. PR played a critical role in successfully changing perceptions, increasing donations and obtaining a government response. This campaign is appropriate for entry into PR because it addresses the role of PR in the following ways: 1. Attractive PR angles in each event to provoke the media’s interest and create a continual buzz to accelerate the campaign’s impact; 2. Continuous PR efforts including 10 bursts of press releases and 2 bursts of press conferences along with the implementation of each event to maximize coverage and secure campaign momentum during most of the year.

The Brief

In less than 22 years, Taiwan will become a country with the most senior citizens in the world per capita. However, elderly care is not a priority for the public. Most public donations go towards children’s charities because of negative perceptions of elderly as being incapable, hopeless and at a dead-end. So the objectives of the campaign were to raise money to support the Hondao senior citizen’s welfare foundation for elderly care by changing negative perceptions through proving that elders are active, hopeful and progressive . Thus, making it a cause worthy to donors to be more charitable.

Results

Our post campaign survey indicated that 91% of our respondents had successfully changed their negative beliefs. The total charity donations increased by 24% compared to the previous year from US$192,825 to US$238,846. The most notable accomplishment of this campaign was the invitation by Taiwan’s President to the welfare foundation’s CEO to discuss current senior citizen social welfare issues. In addition, we generated earned media worth over US$3.5 million with accumulated reach of 40,716,900 and even attracted an American reporter and director for the Discovery Channel, Peter Starr, who arrived to witness the elders chase their dreams by riding motorcycles.

Execution

There were two issues we needed to elaborate the concept: 1st: Ignite elder’s dreams again, because they let their dreams go long ago due to financial and family strains. 2nd: Uplift the public’s interest to pay attention, get involved and close the generation gap with those they don’t understand or know how to communicate with. To better elaborate the concept “dreams never get old”, we motivated 462 elders around 75 years old or above who wanted to fulfill their dreams. We made all 462 of these dreams come true in 270 days. These elders dreamed to play in real baseball games, ride motorcycles, perform in real musical concerts, become runway models, become professional attendants, be soldiers, chase stars like fans, write life journals, go back to school and play in amusement parks. The campaign made elders truly happy and successfully proved that they are active, hopeful and progressive through demonstrating that elders have dreams and are energetic while fulfilling those dreams.

The Situation

In less than 22 years, Taiwan will become a country with the most senior citizens in the world per capita. However, elderly care is not a priority for the public. Most public donations go towards children’s charities because of negative perceptions of elderly as being incapable, hopeless and at a dead-end. So the objectives of the campaign were to raise money to support the Hondao senior citizen’s welfare foundation for elderly care by changing negative perceptions through proving that elders are active, hopeful and progressive. Thus, making it a cause worthy to donors to be more charitable.

The Strategy

We came up with the “Dreams Never Get Old” campaign. The strategy was to utilize “dreams” as a platform to make perceptional change because dreams are defined as future desires and have never been associated with the elders before, making it new to the public. With dreams as a platform, we emphasized elder’s spiritual needs in a positive manner instead of addressed the elders’ physical needs in negative manner strategically to differentiate and dominate the communication in the market unlike traditional charity foundations do. We wanted to change how people feel about elders and encourage the public to embrace elders around them instead of avoiding them by showing how happy elders could be.