We posted the image to our social media accounts and within minutes, it had been shared thousands of times. Over the next 48 hours, we were overwhelmed with selfies.

We were agile enough to ditch our planned editorial schedule and get new content ready to go before anyone else.

We spent every waking hour encouraging as many people as possible to take part, replying to questions and retweeting hundreds of selfies. We used promoted posts with content thanking donors for their support delivering over 400,000 engagements, generating even more selfies and donations.

Within a day, we raised over £1 million for our research. Within a week, it reached £8 million. We kept using photos of staff holding hand-written posters to allow supporters to feel included and share in the success.

The campaign even went global, with people around the world contacting us to ask how they could donate from abroad.

The money raised will allow us to fund 10 clinical trials, including trials that a week before we didn't have money to support. This will allow us to get lifesaving treatments to patients faster. Not bad for a campaign that we didn’t even start.