The Challenge

Not enough people know how much cancer research is able to achieve - or more people would donate to cancer research. Breakthrough Cancer Research is Ireland's leading cancer organisation solely dedicated to research but 100% funded from private donations. We had to get Ireland to understand the scale of research’s success, encouraging survivors themselves to share the news – and to help us raise donations.

The Brief

For National Cancer Survivor's Day 2021, Ireland's leading cancer research organisation Breakthrough Cancer Research wanted to celebrate survivors, and highlight how effective research is at saving their lives.

Objectives:

1. The primary aim was donations, to raise them for Breakthrough Cancer Research nationally through an engaging and impactful campaign.

2. Highlight the urgent need for greater investment in cancer research.

3. Create a campaign that would resonate with and engage cancer survivors and people connected to those affected by cancer.

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We created a whole new county, to represent Ireland's newest and most miraculous population - cancer survivors.

The island of Ireland has a population of 6 million in 32 "counties" - (or states).

200,000 of those are people who have survived cancer.

? If these cancer survivors had their own county, the population would be as big as many of the biggest of Ireland’s 32 counties: County Limerick, County Kildare or County Meath.

? With greater investment in R&D for cancer the population of cancer survivors could be the fastest growing ‘county’ in Ireland

So, to raise awareness and campaign for more funding for research…

We created Ireland's 33rd county - County Saolfada - The name is in Irish Gaelic and translated means the County of Survival, of Long ('fada') Life ('Saol')

We created a unique place and promotional campaign - something that only existed, because of cancer research.

Everyone knows someone with cancer. This was our target audience.

However, competition in the cancer charity sphere is fierce. Our approach needed to help our idea and call for donations stand out.

One-to-one interviews were conducted with key stakeholders and influencers. And we conducted focus groups with supporters and non-supporters in Dublin and Cork.

To our surprise we found things we didn’t expect.

We found :

Apathy “I can’t make a difference”

“healthy” scepticism “How do I trust you can make a difference?”

Fatalism “Death from cancer happens: it’s part of life”

And fatigue “I have no more to give”

This led us a key strategic interpretation:

Our task was to take apathy, scepticism fatalism and fatigue and cure them – with a story of success, hope, positivity and progress.

A traditional message was unlikely to feel fresh and positive enough. We needed to a compelling idea.

On National Cancer Survivor’s Day 2021, Ireland woke up to the whole new county.

TV, Radio, Press, Activation, Ambient and PR broadcast our news.

We contacted survivors to let them know they were honorary citizens of one of Ireland’s biggest and fastest growing populations.

We created the first survivor’s County Council – campaigning for survivor needs – and Ireland’s Prime Minister (An Taoiseach) Micháel Martin to ratify new county and asking government to fund more research.

We gave all of Ireland's cancer survivors one place for their stories to live, at countysaolfada.ie encouraging them to share their stories - living proof that research saves lives

Finally, we got the attention of every other county by adapting Ireland’s iconic road signs to twin counties of similar size with Saolfada’s surviving population.

And to take the story beyond Ireland? We made Ireland’s most famous international cancer survivor Michael Flatley an honorary citizen.

The Result

Donations broke all previous records.

Breakthrough Cancer Research were able to give more to funding research than any previous year - from €1.3m in 2020 to €2.35m in 2021

Coverage reached beyond national media to the UK, Australia, France, Germany and beyond

Good Morning Britain, the UK's top breakfast show carried the story about what Ireland was doing for cancer survivors

80 survivors signed up for the County Council Patient Initiative.

Thousands visited the site and hundreds shared their stories.

In the first day alone coverage included:

3.17M reach for Day 1 alone

In the first week alone coverage included:

55M online readership