The Campaign

ORBIS are an international charity on a mission to eradicate curable blindness around the world. They operate a modified DC-10 aircraft, which functions as a “flying eye hospital”, treating patients in developing countries. In 2012 we were presented with the ultimate challenge. For 2 years running we had helped ORBIS achieve exceptional growth in donations. The DC-10 aircraft had finally reached the end of its usable life after serving for 30 years and that meant a huge amount of money was needed to renovate the plane and convert it into a state-of-the-art eye-surgery to continue ORBIS’s mission. Our idea was simple. For 6 years running, ORBIS had sold branded pins (badges) as their main public fundraising mechanism. This had become an established part of their marketing calendar. This year, we decided, instead of our regular plastic pins, we would make them out of something VERY special… the ORBIS plane itself.

Success of the Campaign

Despite unfavorable market conditions, the idea caught the public’s imagination. The notion of getting the new plane off the ground by owning a piece of the old one, was embraced, not just by the public but also by the media. The campaign became the talking point of numerous write-ups and reports generating an estimated HK$1.4million worth of media. We benchmarked this campaign’s results against ORBIS’ total donations from ALL other fundraising activities (including their raffles, sponsored walks and corporate partnerships etc.), which grew by only 7% in the same period. There was no change to the donation mechanism from 2011-2012, leaving the creative idea and communications campaign as the only remaining driver of change. Most importantly, the HK$2.9 million raised through this campaign was enough to fund sight-saving surgeries for 9,600 people who would otherwise have to live with impaired vision and the prospect of total blindness.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We took scrap parts from the retiring ORBIS DC-10; from the fuselage, the doors, seats even the life jackets – and transformed them into ORBIS pins Because they were made from recycled parts, no two pins were the same. They all had their own distinctive characteristics – scratches, marks and dents – the tangible evidence of the plane’s 30 years of sight-saving missions. This made them eminently collectable. The proposition to our audience was hard to resist. By buying a pin, they helped fund the new ORBIS plane and its sight-saving mission, whilst owning a collectible piece of the old one. As always pins were sold on the street, online and by direct marketing. Sales were supported with a new advertising campaign which brought home the special importance of donations for ORBIS in 2012.