People donate for poppies as mark of respect and recognition, but also as a demonstration of their generosity. For a younger audience, social networks have provided another important and extensive social environment for which to show support.

On the 90th anniversary of the poppy, we proposed allowing users to donate via SMS on their mobiles for a virtual poppy on their Twitter profile. Users simply sent their username, making an instant donation, and their profile picture instantly appeared along with the poppy on the Roll of Honour. They could set this as their profile picture, and share socially.

Word quickly spread across social media, as hundreds of people donated and wore their poppies. #poppyday become a trending topic in NZ as local celebrities, politicians and business also rushed to get their poppies pushing the ANZAC message out to a total of 310,000 people. This resulted in donations almost 10 times the average takings from street locations.The virtual poppy was featured on prime-time news bulletins across TV and Radio. And of course, online the story was everywhere. But the best result was having some of the largest ANZAC turnouts with young Kiwis in modern history.