The Campaign

There wasn’t an internal motivation of the people to entirely comprehend “donating” itself, except maybe just “feeling really bad” for the “poor” people. People weren’t used to the idea that “donating” not only helps others, but makes oneself feel good and happy as well. Also, voluntary donation would happen only 3 out of 10 times according to the National Statistics Office. Thus, meaning people didn’t find the reason or meaning to the act of donating. Since, even though ChildFundKorea is the top institution in Korea, it also wanted to raise awareness of its brand within Seoul, as well as create a better culture of donating, using just a normal donation box would never raise the awareness as we wanted. We needed a special new thing to symbolize our idea. Observing that whenever people would jump up and down things fell out of their pockets, we created a trampoline to be the donation box, the DONATE-POLINE. It was the easy to participate. You would fill up your pockets full of coins, and the coins that had fallen from your pockets would automatically be donated. And this not only changed people’s opinion of donation but it directly increased the donation rates. After the installation in March, 2015, more than 1,000 people participated in a day. The happy faces of the participants went viral online which started a donating relay. And there were more than 2,000,000 hits on SNS. Sponsorship inquiries from companies increased by 355% , according to ChildFundKorea. DONATE-POLINE is changing the donating culture in Korea.

The Brief

South Korea’s oldest child welfare institution, ChildFundKorea needed to communicate the idea that donating doesn’t happen when you “have” the time to think about others, but you could do it anywhere, anytime, with a happy heart. Thus, creating a different mindset of the donating act itself was the goal of the campaign. From the boring, same old donation box, the fun and entertaining DONATE-POLINE was creating a whole different layer to it all, which got attention from all over the nation on ChildFundKorea and ultimately increasing donation rates.

Results

The results were amazing. Brand awareness of ChildFundKorea became much more higher, as there was increase to 355% of sponsorship inquiries from companies. After the installation of the DONATE-POLINE in Seoul, more than 1,000 people participated in a day, and more than 2 Million hits on SNS, as well as around 1,000,000 USD worth of media exposure and coverage. ChildFundKorea’s brand awareness had increased by 43%, and now hopes for a long-term sponsorship from the younger generation of Korea. The DONATE-POLINE was installed not only in 70 of ChildFundKorea’s offices all over the nation, but schools, famous streets and even theme parks wanted to install this donation box in their area. DONATE-POLINE is not only a special donation box, but also helped ChildFundKorea to raise awareness of its own brand as truly one of the top child welfare institutions in Korea.

Execution

The greatest symbol of “donation” is the “donation-box” itself. So, we wanted to make a “donation-box” that would be special and entertaining for everyone participating, which is how we came up with the idea of DONATE-POLINE. People could get into a gigantic trampoline which was a donation box as itself. People would enjoy jumping up and down on the trampoline, with their pockets filled with coins, which they would be donating. Donating was no longer just for the other person, but something I could be happy and enjoy as well. We wanted to have as much natural exposure of happy pictures on the trampoline to go viral, and cause curiosity Youtube & Facebook. After the installation in March, 2015, more than 1,000 people participated in a day, and these photos went viral. This DONATE-POLINE was not only a donation box but also they symbol of change that occurred within peoples’ perception of donating.

The Situation

South Korea was ranked 60th in the “Giving Index”, a tumble down from 2012’s 45th.(CAF,2014) Also, voluntary donation would happen only 3 out of 10 times according to the National Statistics Office. Thus, meaning people didn’t find the reason or meaning to the act of donating. Considering that Korea has the 10th largest economy in the world, sharing still didn’t seem to be natural or second nature to the people. Because South Korea was obsessed with developing the economy as much and fast as possible, sharing was not a priority to the people of Korea.

The Strategy

The main reason for the lack of donating in this country was indifference (34.3%, GivingKorea 2013). There wasn’t an internal motivation of the people to entirely comprehend “donating” itself, except maybe just “feeling really bad” for the “poor” people. People weren’t used to the idea that “donating” not only helps others, but makes oneself feel good and happy as well. So, using just a normal donation box seemed to be out of the question. We needed a special donation box that would create buzz on its own.