Gazeta Sporturilor, the no.1 sports newspaper in Romania, decided to help former football player Mihai Nesu raise money for his Foundation.

The main challenge when launching such projects is that the advertising costs to raise awareness for a cause are often bigger than the money collected!

There is no guarantee that the raised money will at least cover the spent money!

As advertising budgets seemed to be the problem, maybe they could also represent the solution.

Our Idea: shorten commercials with 1 second, and donate the TV buying value of the extracted second to Mihai Nesu’s cause.

The difference between a 30 second and a 29 second TV commercial is imperceptible for viewers, but the media buying cost for that 1 second represents 3.33% from the total budget. As the TV buying budgets are huge, there is a lot of potential money to be raised.

This is how Second-Life was born: as a collective program through which participating advertisers cut 1 second from their regular TV commercials and gave the saved media money to Nesu’s Foundation.

For commercials to be recognized as part of the Second-Life program by anyone, the participating ads were marked with the Second Life logo.

The program was promoted through a print, outdoor and online campaign brought to life with no costs, as all media suppliers fell in love with the cause and decided to support it for free.

Some results:

The campaign generated over 400.000 worth of PR for the participating brands, involving top Romanian bloggers and social media influencers.

7 national campaigns joined the program, and more are expected to enter.

Over 5.000 Second-Life participating TVCs

With over 90% of all Romanians being exposed to a Second Life campaign the initiative got immense coverage

But the most important: over 22.000 Euro were raised for the foundation, and Second Life became a new way in which advertising can improve peoples lives.