This campaign, for The Wishing Factory NGO to drive more Thalassemia testing, leverages social thinking and the use of influencers. To disrupt the inertia towards testing we needed a sharp insight and strong visual.

The fact that many Thalassemia Major patients live only 'half-a-life' gave us the idea of using half-a-face to create awareness of this 'half a life'. In an image driven social media culture, this became an ideal device to create high levels of engagement and reach. Four celebrity influencers close to the NGO posted their half faces and tagged others to do the same, sparking this campaign.

Even today, over 10,000 children are born every year in India, with Thalassemia Major, a life threatening blood disorder.

This disease can get transmitted to children through their parents who have Thalassemia Minor. People don’t know about the necessary tests that they need to take to check their Thalassemia status. The Wishing Factory has been trying to spread awareness about Thalassemia Major since 2015, yet the number of calls that they get on their helpline has been very low. There is very little public interest or momentum towards tackling this disease.

While the word Thalassemia seems familiar to a few, barely anyone knows the details about this disease and how deadly it can be for their children. This led us to our challenge of creating awareness about this disease and getting people to enquire about the tests.

#AadhiwaliZindagiMitao

(Let’s eradicate this ‘half a life’)

An idea brought alive by using ‘half a face’ to create awareness about ‘half a life’.

(pause – silence)

We launched this campaign on 8th May 2019, World Thalassemia Day, by asking four celebrities close to the NGO…to upload an image of their face cropped in half, and tag three friends to do the same.

This was the message they spread through their post copy:

Today is #WorldThalassemiaDay and the launch of our #AadhiwaliZindagiMitao movement to remind everyone to get tested for Thalassemia and avoid giving their child half a life. Please post a picture of your face cropped to half and tag three others to do the same so we can spread the word! Visit www.thewishingfactory.org

A disease that parents pass on to their children, purely due to ignorance, is still killing thousands of children in India every year.

Partth Thakur, the founder of ‘The Wishing Factory’ and a Thalassemia Major patient himself was the first one to tell us about the disease and its challenges.

We met 10 more Thalassemia Major patients across various age groups to understand the situation. One of the girls we spoke to, passed away a month after the interview, due to complications related to the disease. This left us devastated.

The fact that - young, promising lives are snatched away mid-way through their journey - is the cruellest part of this disease.

And this led us to our insight:

Children suffering from Thalassemia Major rarely live beyond their 30s,

'which is less than half the life an average person lives.'

Once we had the right foundation, we started promoting the campaign idea to a larger audience. We made it a movement that had ‘badge value’ attached to it, with its powerful purpose and high celebrity quotient.

As the campaign reached over 20 countries, we got media requests for interviews with some of the celebrities and with members of the NGO.

Our role was to reinforce the half-face as an iconic device for Thalassemia awareness across all touch points and helps drive enquires for the test.

We also uploaded educational videos with Kunal Kapoor, an Indian actor, writer and social entrepreneur and Partth Thakur, TWF founder, discussing important facets of this disease and its prevention. This was to address the questions that this campaign will have raised across the people it reached and to further push urgency towards testing.

The campaign reached over 67 Million people, engaging more than 3.7 Million people through over 2,000 organic posts across social media platforms during the active period.

Over 7 years before this campaign there were 1422 posts tagged #WorldThalassemiaDay. In just 36 hours we got almost the same number of posts, as were added in the past 7 years.

The campaign received organic PR from more than 30 different websites.

The average number of calls to the NGO helpline increased from 5 per day to 40 per day, an 8x increase.

In the month following the campaign, 684 people took the test at the laboratory that was monitored. This was a 2.75X increase compared to the average 250 per month before the campaign.

All this at a spend of under $400.