This is the story of how 300 agency, client and stage staff, celebrities, government ministers and Australia’s Prime Minister, came together to pull off a concert that couldn’t be done, to show the carers of Australia that they are loved, and in doing so, revealed to the rest of the country the truth about unpaid family caring, and why the act of caring is the ultimate expression of our humanity.

There are two ways to approach a Federal Government public interest awareness campaign. The normal method is to tell people what you want them to think. Alternatively, you can capture the public’s imagination by actively demonstrating a passion for the subject to draw people in. That’s what we did. Our brief was to raise awareness, understanding and recognition for Australia’s 2.6 million unpaid family carers. These are people that care for their disabled children, physically and mentally impaired fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers and their partners 24 hours a day. And they do it with almost no recognition. It’s a subject that most people don’t want to acknowledge or engage with.

So, we didn’t try and force a message onto people. We showed that we cared. We demonstrated the love, courage and passion required to care for another human around the clock, by putting ourselves through 24 non-stop hours of physically and mentally intensive caring for each other.

The idea: The Impossible Orchestra. A free public concert that can’t be done if people don’t care for each other. Held at Melbourne’s premier music hall, a full 90 piece orchestra would play a concert with a twist from 6pm Saturday to 6pm Sunday to show the people of Australia what it takes to care around the clock and why it’s so important.

The results.

As a result, 35% more people heard about the issue of caring and we delivered significant shifts against our first four objectives. In addition, 6,500 people attended the concert while 250,000 watched online. We earned PR coverage in 217 news outlets. 13.7 million Australians (80% of the adult population) were reached through PR with $0 spent on media.