Agency: Craft Media
Category: Best contextual campaign
Challenge
Charity MSI Reproductive Choices (MSI) provides contraception and abortion for women worldwide. However, despite their life-saving work, MSI is not widely known in the UK. MSI needed to raise awareness and prompt action. Historically, the majority of its funding has come from institutional donors and foundations close to the cause, so MSI needed to target a broader audience and compete in the popular end-of-year giving period. With a strict budget, smart planning was needed to improve prompted awareness.
Approach
The topic of reproductive health remains stigmatised. MSI needed to find a way to deliver a ‘close to home’ message to an audience open to charitable giving, when they were most likely to take notice. News brands were the strongest channel for this audience, the highest indexing titles being the Guardian, the Observer, The Times and The Sunday Times.
The creative juxtaposed the plentiful choice in everyday life with the lack of choice experienced by the women that MSI supports. While the end-of-the-year period is cluttered with advertising, MSI chose to lean into the media chaos and use this as part of their messaging.
Media placements sought to emphasise the ‘lack-of-choice contrast’ through newspaper-style insertions directly opposite seasonal gift guides. MSI also worked with Ozone to deliver disruptive interscroller formats and standard display banners across a custom title list aligned with MSI’s brand values.
Results
The campaign really delivered on MSI’s objective of raising awareness to drive action. Site traffic was up 54% YOY, and there was a 90% increase in donations versus the previous year. Across all donations, 5% were attributed to news brands whilst the campaign likely had a halo impact on the other 95%. There was 90% increase in non-attributable donations. Finally, a brand lift study through Ozone demonstrated that exposure to the ads resulted in a significant increase in awareness.