The Fearless Challenge is a truly Integrated campaign. The success of the Fearless Challenge in reinvigorating the Canadian Cancer Society’s brand and driving a new conversation about cancer fundraising owes a great deal to the campaign’s seamless execution across multiple channels (including video, radio, out-of-home, interactive digital, social, and earned media).

In order to increase donations and awareness for the Canadian Cancer Society, we were asked to develop an entirely new fundraising platform that could deliver on the CCS’s mission: To create a world where no Canadian fears cancer.

To accomplish this goal, we developed the Fearless Challenge, a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign that invites Canadians to face their fears online, to raise money.

The idea is simple: state your fear online, set the amount of donation money you will be willing to face it for, then once your monetary goal is reached, film yourself completing the challenge, then upload it to FearlessChallenge.ca for everyone to see and share.

The Fearless Challenge launched with out of home posters, radio, pre-roll video and banners, that drove people to the site. The campaign generated huge buzz with record-breaking digital performance, 35 million earned impressions and a 50% spike in social conversation around the CCS.

Results so far have been staggering. We received over 35 million earned media impressions with coverage from the Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, and ET Canada. The campaign’s strong digital element broke records with click-through rates of 14.2% and engagement rates of 30.3% (compared to industry benchmarks of 0.1-0.4%).*

In the two months following the launch of the Fearless Challenge online mentions of the CCS increased by over 50 percent. Comments on the campaign were overwhelmingly positive: Adweek called it, “Kickstarter meets Fear Factor for a good cause.” Cancer bloggers appreciated that the campaign was, “not just about putting a pink sticker on things but to challenge each person to take a tiny step into the world of fear we were plunged into.”**

*UM Media Tracking, Internal Social Sentiment and Activity Reporting, Donation Reporting, 2014.

**FacingCancer.ca

We developed the Fearless Challenge, a groundbreaking fundraising event and campaign that challenge Canadians to face their fears, so those living with cancer can do the same.

We launched the campaign the first week of August 2014 with a unique fundraising platform (FearlessChallenge.ca), a promotional video with music donated by Canadian band Rebel Coast, as well as pre-roll featuring Canadian celebrity endorsements and challenges.

Throughout August and September the year-1 Ontario-only campaign was supported by radio, video, and OOH (featuring real Canadians participating in the challenge) driving Ontarians to FearlessChallenge.ca. At the site individuals could post their pledges, collect donations, and share videos of them completing their challenges.

The Canadian Cancer Society is one of the most influential charitable organizations in Canada. However they have been steadily losing share of fundraising dollars in an extremely crowded charitable landscape.

We needed to develop an entirely new, breakthrough fundraising campaign that would boost fundraising dollars and reignite awareness and interest in CCS’s mission: To create a world where no Canadian fears Cancer.

Agency research revealed that competitors were mainly talking about finding a cure for cancer, despite cancer being caused by a variety of factors.* ** We also discovered that despite an over 60% average survival rate, cancer is still the most feared diagnosis a person can get. Cancer is seen as a death sentence. We wanted to show Canadians that cancer can one day become manageable and no longer be feared.

*“The Next Generation of Canadian Giving”, 2013. Blackbaud.

**“Peer to Peer Fundraising Benchmark Study” 2013, Blackbaud.