The world was experiencing the greatest humanitarian refugee crisis since WW2. Nearly 1/4 of the world’s children were suffering from violence in conflict or disaster stricken countries, and 535 million children were often without access to medical care, quality education, nutrition and protection.

But with so many crises happening overseas, all of which were clearly getting worse rather than better, Australians were increasingly skeptical, rather than supportive of overseas aid. Reflected by the fact that over 80% of Australians wanted to cut foreign aid – rather than increase it. (Source: Australian Government, Department of International Development).

This growing insularity meant that Australians were focusing more on giving support to charities with a domestic agenda, rather than the plight of far away peoples of whom they knew nothing about.

The big strategic idea:

To ask first for Australians time, and then turn that time into tangible $.

The creative idea:

A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME

We asked people to give us the value of their time in the form of a monetary donation.

The creative execution:

Creating the revolutionary new giving movement ‘Give a Minute’ we invited Australians to find out the value of their time and donate that value directly to UNICEF - proving everyone can contribute meaningfully no matter their situation.

In 70 years UNICEF has made tremendous gains in fighting childhood inequity. And looking ahead they believe that within the next 70, they can eradicate it for good.

But facts can be uncomfortable things. As with each passing moment in reaching that goal, it was clear many children would still suffer…

Each year over 57,000 web pages are found to contain images of child sexual abuse.

Each day 8 million children are beaten.

Every 10 minutes a child dies in Yemen.

Every 5 minutes a child dies at the hands of violence.

Every single minute 17 teenage girls are raped.

Time was not on our side.

But time could also be the solution…

The breakthrough:

Whilst Australians were donating less and less of their money, $14 on average, donations of time were on the up, with Australians giving an average 2.5 hours of volunteer time a week to charitable causes - worth $75 dollars based on average wages.

Whilst this dynamic favours local charities that allow people to volunteer their time, there was an opportunity for a large international charity to apply this theory to how they could ask for support.

Despite no media spend, the campaign was a resounding success…

Media objectives and results:

The campaign was able to generate immediate media interest from major news outlets, including a prime time spot on Channel 10’s ‘The Project’.

Target: 200K earned media impressions.

Result: 657K impressions, the feature on ‘The Project’ generated 519K impressions alone.

Target: 150K organic social media impressions

Result: 423K organic social media impressions.

As pleasing as the media and social measures were, it would mean nothing unless we encouraged people to give us the value of their time and hit our donation targets - we did just that and some more…

Business objectives and results:

Target: Achieve 10% of the year’s targeted donations within four weeks.

Result: 20% of the year’s targeted donation in half the time, 2 weeks.

Target: Convert 5% of donors into full-time donors.

Result: 8% of donors converted into full time-donors.