Citi, Mastercard together with the agency had to solve two tasks: increase awareness of epidermolysis bullosa and gather donations to BELA Fund. But the disease is so rare and unrelatable, and the media space is so densely saturated with various charities’ asking for support that it is difficult to find a way to capture TA’s interest. So the agency decided to talk about something they can understand: a life without human touch that kids with epidermolysis bullosa have to endure. The team wanted to turn the “no touch” concept upside down: from a stigma to a great way to help.

Without a single touch.

“The Untouchables” is a series of custom-made posters with built-in equipment for contactless payment. Just by waving a bank card or any other contactless payment device in front of the poster, a person could make an instant donation to BELA Fund.

Before the project, there was no device that would allow automatic contactless payment — normally, there has to be a cashier or someone to input the data for you and initiate the payment. For the donations to truly happen “without a single touch”, Citi and Mastercard had to put together a set of custom-built equipment that would always be alert and ready to accept payments without the need for someone to input any information. The prototype smart poster took about 6 months to put together, test, and get ready for mass production.

Altogether, 50 smart posters were built. We placed them in every Citi branch in Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as some of the hottest venues of the two cities: shopping malls, cafes, restaurants, museums, theaters and other public places. The placement began in December 2016, and the venues are in constant rotation in order to ensure maximum coverage.

To inform the audience about our smart posters and increase awareness of epidermolysis bullosa we created a short campaign video. The video was shared by over 70 Russian celebrities, including theater and film stars, athletes, TV presenters, and public figures, gaining massive media coverage. With zero media budget, the video was viewed over 4,7 million times and reached more than 62 million people and counting. For the first time ever, epidermolysis bullosa caught public attention, increasing awareness of this rare disease and opening up the dialog on helping the butterfly children.

But most importantly, just in the first weeks of the campaign, the amount of funds raised increased by 144% compared to same period last year.