We had two problems:

1. In the middle of the biggest social uprising in Chile in the last 30 years, the Chilean Red Cross attended to hundreds of people injured on the front line of protests, but we needed at least US$10,000 per month in donations to obtain basic supplies like serum, gauze and water to remain there.

2. The mass media outlets that normally donated free advertising space for our campaigns were harshly criticized by Chileans for hiding the acts of violence committed.

So, where were we to launch our campaign if we had no budget for that?

Since 64% of Chileans supported the protests*, we wanted to reach the largest number of them possible by placing our message in high-traffic and high-credibility channels.

We used independent digital media such as news portals, entertainment profiles on social networks, etc. to achieve this.

*Source: CADEM, Plaza Pública survey, 30 December 2019.

This campaign's implementation is basic and quite simple.

Since we had no budget to launch it, we based all our efforts on posts in social networks, which quickly went viral due to the effervescence that the issue stirred in the country.

At the same time, we contacted the most highly appreciated independent digital media outlets in Chile during this period and took advantage of their scope to get more media and people to find out about the initiative.

Thus, 100 media outlets joined in a completely organic way, allowing us to obtain the supplies to remain on the front line of protests.

- An investment of US$0.

- Over 100 independent national and international media outlets donated their first line.

- Visits to our donations website increased by 30%.

- US$130,000 raised in two months. This is 650% more than was projected at the beginning of the campaign. It is a historic sum for a nonprofit institution in a small country with 19 million inhabitants, in the middle of its biggest social crisis in the last 30 years.

- The most successful digital campaign in the history of the Chilean Red Cross.