The Kids’ Cancer Project
K’day Appeal
Overview
The Kids’ Cancer Project is an independent national charity supporting childhood cancer research. Thanks to strong community support, the charity has committed over $55,000,000 to scientific research projects since 2005, to help children with many types of cancer. However, brand insights research revealed that while awareness has been growing steadily, familiarity was remaining stagnant. In other words, donors and prospective donors were finding it hard to articulate what TKCP stands for and funds.
Marlin’s relationship with The Kids’ Cancer Project began in 2021 with the development of a new p2p event called The Better Challenge. The first year event was a huge success raising over $1million in vital funds towards better treatments and better outcomes for kids with cancer.
We wanted to help our client partners to achieve even more, so we proactively approached them with a new idea for how they could build the familiarity with what they fund, using a brand response approach.
Problem
Donors and prospective donors were finding it hard to articulate what TKCP stands for and funds.
Solution
We proactively approached TKCP with a new idea for how they could build the familiarity with what they fund, using a brand response approach.
Results
The campaign activation raised $400,000, and in particular attracted many lapsed donors back to the charity.
On February 23rd 2023, we invited Australians to swap Gday and “Say K’day to better treatments for kids with cancer.”
Our campaign used earned and paid media to disrupt the morning rituals of thousands of Australians, and pulled their focus towards the love and importance of childhood to raise awareness about the need to protect children from cancer.
With the creation of the engaging new “K’day” pneumonic, media partnerships across radio and outdoor were formed that provided over $1.3M in exposure from just $200k of spend.
The identity of K’day was developed as a new way to share the distinctive asset of the Hexagon characters, which Marlin had created and successfully used for The Better Challenge.
The campaign was built to take advantage of a revenue generating activation. We developed a matched giving day for which new and existing corporate partners were engaged to give new funding towards a pool of over $200,000.
The date was selected to coincide with International Childhood Cancer Awareness Day, and the fundraising successfully generated an additional 6% to the charity’s annual income in just a few days.
The campaign activation raised $400,000, and in particular attracted many lapsed donors back to the charity. In fact over 30% of individuals who donated on K’day, had not given since 2021 or even longer ago.
The combination of brand building and response generation has created a new idea that can keep giving as media partnerships and celebrity influencers, support the adoption of a new Australian meme, to help grow the matched giving day activation for years to come.
