Helping a charity reach a new audience
UNHCR is the UN Refugee Agency and they work to protect and assist refugees around the world.
We were approached by an agency with an existing relationship with UNHCR to provide the digital support of an exciting new global campaign. The brief was to create a lead generation campaign with a KPI of 1.5 million new leads. We were heavily involved in the creative process where we pitched a number of ideas to UNHCR and the chosen idea was one that I personally brought to a collaborative cross-agency brainstorm.
The campaign concept
By harnessing the miles covered by fitness app/device users, we are creating a virtual solidarity walk for refugees where people will be asked to contribute to a global target of 1 Billion Miles or 2 billion kilometres. This target represents the cumulative miles walked by refugees globally each year. Users will be asked to sign-up using a form on the website that captures their email and phone number. Alongside this, we will be telling the stories of real refugee journeys and encouraging participants to walk the distances they have covered to reach safety.
My role as design lead on the project was to develop the campaign branding, website and marketing materials which would be rolled out in 22 markets across the world.
In terms of the art direction we didn’t want this campaign to fit the charity mould. We wanted it to look sporty, inspirational and energetic. We achieved this by introducing italics, darker colours and angles to the brand – taking inspiration from the likes of Nike, This Girl Can campaign and other sports brands.
This all came together on the campaign website where I worked closely with the lead front end developer to bring the imagery and angles to life with interaction design.
The campaign has been picked up by 22 markets around the world, such as USA, Japan, Hong Kong and Germany. In order to create a consistent launch we created a toolkit which provided brand guidance, suggested marketing strategy and roadmap, PSD templates for marketing material for use across multiple channels, website copy and images and market on-boarding information. Below are some examples of the digital banners, social paid advertising and emails that we created for the markets to use.
One of the most exciting aspects of the project was recruiting UNCHR’s Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller to be the face of the campaign. He played a crucial part in promotional material, such as this campaign video.
The campaign has been picked up by The Drum, Bima, Little Black Book and many other media outlets – https://stepwithrefugees.org/en/
