The Brief

Direct marketing is often associated with consumer products therefore it provided the ideal platform to get across our message: Child traffickers don’t see children as humans, they see them as products. This was brought to life on International Children’s Day using the tools of direct marketing to illustrate and spread awareness of the problem and get people to take action. Key elements involved an infomercial shown online and in cinemas targeted at parents with children, metro posters, shop window takeovers in shopping malls and direct street selling. This gained the awareness desired and drove people to charity’s social platform.

Creative Execution

The creative executions adopts the point of view of a callous child trafficker selling kids by offering special deals and discounts in the same way a seller of a product would do. The dramatization of this singular thought was extremely relevant as marketing a product is similar to marketing a child in the eyes of a child trafficker. The whole campaign centred around International Children’s Day on June 1, 2015. It started with an infomercial shown online, on special screens and in cinemas a week before Children’s day. This was supported with print and metro posters and on Children’s day itself, there were shop window takeovers in shopping malls and high street stores. This also involved street sellers selling direct to the public. All this driving the public to the charity’s website.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The client is a government-backed charity raising awareness aid prevention and solving this ongoing issue. So our target audience is everyone in China with the main emphasis on families who have children. The campaign was relevant to show the government charity is active in dealing with this issue and offering help, advice and action to end child trafficking.

Results

In only 3 weeks since posting the video it received over 50,000 views, was with over 5,000 mentions in discussion forums and generated unprecedented online search volume, searches for 'Child Trafficking increased by over 20X on the same period from the previous year. If the first step is getting people to want to find out more about our cause, then we have succeeded.

Operating on a very tight budget (see detailed third party costs below), the agency fully met its objectives: To deliver a fully integrated campaign based on a single creative idea that really hits home the charity's message and make an impact with the public. This was justified by the coverage and the public's positive responses. This included: 2 High quality, emotional films delivered effectively online, on special screens and in cinemas. 3 print and poster executions in 2d and 3d for metro stations in major Chinese cities. In store and window display materials and flyers for distribution on street level and shopping mall activations. All costs in Chinese RMB Film: props / food / talent / misc = 6630 Media: Cinema (Beijing & Shanghai) = 2000 Metro OOH materials = 28900 Store production materials = 3400 The Activation Film: props / food / talent / misc = 12450 Total 49,979.7 RMB