The Campaign

THE LONGEST WAIT – an experiential idea that reduced the waiting time for guide dogs, by making VIPs wait for 8.5 years. In China, the waiting time to own a guide dog is up to 8.5 years due to the lack of donations. So, we created a special ticket machine that dispensed queue tickets with a waiting time of 8.5 years. Our idea has never been done before by any bank because VIPs are normally given the red-carpet treatment. But we put our VIPs in the shoes of the visually impaired and made them wait for 8.5 years. By putting VIPs in the shoes of the visually impaired, they experienced The Longest Wait and this led many VIPs to purchase the investment product and donate to the cause, which then created social conversations that drove more people to participate.

The Brief

Total production cost: RMB90,000 ($13,000)

Creative Execution

We created a special ticket machine that dispensed queue tickets with a waiting time of 8.5 years. The machine was placed at the entrance of the VIP section, with bank attendants that were instructed to ignore walk-in VIP customers until they approached them. During the entire activation, we captured VIPs reactions via hidden cameras and compiled them into a video. With our VIPs consent, we shared it on social platforms for regular bank customers to access and find out more about the campaign. It didn’t take too long for news portals to pick up our idea and featured it on their front pages.

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

- Earned 6,000,000 impressions - Donated RMB1,000,000 to train more guide dogs - Reduced the waiting time for guide dogs

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

Traditionally, donation campaigns leveraged on sympathy to gain attention. But people are wary towards such campaigns and ignore them. So instead of a traditional approach, we made people experience the problem faced by the visually impaired. We used the bank’s premise and online platforms that proved to be cost-efficient and also took advantage of the social behaviour of social platforms by spreading a strong social responsibility message that resonated well with people and earning 6 million impressions. Initially, we were apprehensive because of the possible backlash, but eventually agreed to take the risk because of the potential impact.

We applied a dual-pronged approach and targeted VIPs and regular bank customers. To demonstrate the idea of The Longest Wait, we firstly targeted VIPs because they’re normally given a red-carpet treatment (they’re also the biggest donators due of their healthy account). Our desired outcome was to see VIPs being told to wait for 8.5 years, getting frustrated, and eventually purchase an investment product that donates a portion of sales to the cause. Once we had successfully infiltrated the VIPs, we shared their reactions with the regular bank customers via our social platforms. They found out more about this campaign, participated in it and shared this idea on their social platforms. The idea eventually reached the news portals and was featured on their front pages.