Describe the creative idea

Every year, WaterAid asks Australians to only drink water for a whole month: a challenge that brings awareness to a global water shortage problem, and raises the funds needed to bring clean water to 1 in 9 people worldwide with no access to it. To help the NGO drive more donations, we created not one piece of content for the challenge, but thousands: one video for every single fundraiser, making participants feel like the NGO was talking directly to them – and only them. Working resourcefully, we repurposed WaterAid’s existing assets to tailor our videos to the key motivators of each audience WaterAid wanted to reach: the Healthies, who see the challenge as an opportunity to stay healthy while doing good for millions of people, and the Greenies, who focus instead on the impact they’re having on others and see the challenge’s health benefits as an extra perk.

Describe the execution

We knew that our personalisation engine, voundry, would be the perfect solution for reaching WaterAid’s large and varied audiences in a personal, compelling way. Using voundry to render videos in almost real time, and collaborating closely with WaterAid across different time zones (with the campaign running in Australia, and our production team based in the UK), we repurposed the NGO’s existing assets into thousands of new, personalised videos: one for each fundraiser. Throughout the campaign, which lasted for all of March 2020, we sent 2,000+ videos individually to all participants via email to empower and motivate them to keep up with the challenge. With data provided by WaterAid and divided by audience category, we addressed each recipient by name and appealed to their specific reasons for participating. Our aim was to remind the Healthies that more than an opportunity to stay hydrated, the challenge is a crucial means of fundraising to solve a global water shortage crisis. Meanwhile, we activated the Greenies as WaterAid supporters to encourage others to join in. A key consideration which drove our campaign at the time was the wildfires devastating large areas all over Australia. We realised that unlike previous WaterAid Challenges, this year called for a special sensitivity in light of the difficult situation, and used encouraging language to strike the right tone of voice, even when sharing hard-hitting facts. The smart use of WaterAid’s existing assets meant that we offered a cost-effective yet tailored solution to our client – crucial for a nonprofit that needs to maximise its funds for communities in need. The campaign was also WaterAid’s first foray into personalised marketing, and we’re proud to have made that first experience a successful one for them. Better yet: our videos helped to bring clean water to 785 million people worldwide.