Cannes Lions

The Skin Trade

WUNDERMAN THOMPSON ARGENTINA, Buenos Aires / FLOW & FUNDACIÓN MANOS ABIERTAS / 2020

Awards:

1 Bronze Cannes Lions
1 Shortlisted Cannes Lions
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Overview

Entries

Credits

OVERVIEW

Background

As we said earlier on, over 50% of kids and teenagers live in a poverty situation, and they worry because of their lack of clothes.

This percentage is growing every year, and does not seem to have a solution.

This is why Flow, an on-demand video leading platform whose main target is young people and teenagers, decided to do something about it.

Alongside Fundación Manos Abiertas NGO, we looked for ways of helping, being there for them, assisting them, and simultaneously making the rest of the teenagers aware of this issue.

Through gaming, of course.

Idea

Argentina spends over US$1,000,000 on Skins every month.

What does this mean?

It means that while lots of kids suffer from this lack of clothes in real life, others are concerned about clothes in videogames.

That is why we created a unique Marketplace: “The Skin Trade”, where we offered gamers a very simplistic exchange:

Donating the clothes they don’t wear in real life. In exchange for that, they would receive exclusive clothes for their online characters (skins).

A win-win for every teenager.

Strategy

Our challenge was to make young people and teenagers between 16 and 25 aware of this issue, increase their commitment, and offer the necessary tools to help them help others.

The first thing was to try and catch their attention. Catching the attention of a generation who spends more time on videogames or just watching how others play videogames was not an easy thing to do.

Therefore, we started off by understanding which their interests are, what it is that moves them, and we found an eye-opening fact: “Argentina spends over US$1,000,000 on Skins every months”. That was the key: Skins.

We only needed a crossover between the real and virtual world to find a solution.

Execution

We became partners with the biggest LATAM gamer event: League of Legends Finals.

The campaign reached both 15,000 people attending the Finals and 2,000,000 online followers.

We delivered 10,000 personalized cards for each of the gamers donating their clothes.

In addition, “The Skin Trade” kept on growing both on social media and Twitch, where influencers and gamers added on the initiative, inviting all their followers to take part in it.

By doing so, the action achieved eSports community recognition.

Outcome

In just one day, the NGO collected more clothes than it had collected throughout the year (+ 200,000 items) thanks to the launch of the “Skin Trade” campaign.

Thousands of teenagers familiarized with the issue and committed with the cause, thus gathering over 5,000 new volunteers for the NGO.

The campaign reached both the 15,000 spectators who attended the Finals and the 2,000,000 who followed the event online, making #SkinTrade a trending topic, even surpassing the official hashtag of the League of Legends Finals.

The action was so successful that "The Skin Trade" will be part of the Epic Games, the Fortnite Finals, as well as all eSports events taking place in Argentina.