Each year Vodafone pays for up to six people to spend a year working for their chosen youth charity. Sounds great but Vodafone has always struggled to attract quality people willing to go through the grueling application process and take a year out of their lives. Making our job of finding these people even harder was the fact that New Zealanders are generally unforgiving towards young people in trouble.

We showed young people doing things that most New Zealanders would consider bad. We then used a simple headline that showed what these young people could become if given the chance. The copy then challenged the reader, asking if they were the kind of person who can recognise the potential in New Zealand youth? We used multiple channels to attract applicants and create awareness of the issue.

We received 155 high quality applications for the six places, an increase of 50% on the previous year. Such was the quality of these applicants that, for the first time ever, the client couldn’t limit the number to six, instead offering 9 placements. The banners received 12.9 million impressions, an increase of 37% on the previous year’s record high. The banner on the YahooXtra site received 965,100 impressions alone, providing 0.5% result and the highest click-thru rate ever recorded in New Zealand for eyeblasters.