Finnish Church Aid: The Different Gift

The supporting important topics or organizations is not only a generous gesture but also one of the “purchasing decisions.” It is also a way to show your values and goodwill.

The fundraising communication style is, however, usually quite negative. Almost every fundraiser uses the same campaign concept: Showing poor and suffering people begging help and making you feel guilty.

We were glad when we got an assignment to re-design a creative strategy, concept, and campaign for Finnish Church Aid’s fundraising concept Different Gift. In that concept, you could give a small donation as a gift for someone. The organization used donations to help people living in developing countries by giving them something which helps them survive and live better. Some people can get chickens; some maybe could take their kids to school.

We decided to use a different style than in typical fundraising marketing and make people spread the happy feeling what donating for a good cause brings. Nobody wants to give or get a gift, which makes you feel sad and guilty. We also aimed to be funny; humor is a great tool to win hearts.

Everyone knows how difficult it is to get a gift for a person who does not need anything. Everyone also knows how it feels to get a useless or stupid gift. Not good.

Giving your friends a different Gift, donating money for an important cause, could be the best solution if the gift feels funny and inspiring and makes both the gift receiver and giver feel delighted and smart.

Our creative concept made donations feel like ordinary tangible funny gifts, and it worked perfectly. Because the budget was limited, the printed ads were simple and small in size, and they were spread widely in magazines and on the internet. We also created an e-commerce store where you could buy and send virtual donations as gifts.

Our first Christmas campaign doubled the annual donations from the last year to million Euros. The second campaign tripled them to three million Euros.

All this happened with the same minimal annual marketing budget and the same “product assortment” than before.

ClientFinnish Church Aid, Riikka Karppinen and othersMy roleCreative strategy, Campaign concept, Media strategy and planning, budgeting, creative ad design, Copywriting. ResultsThe value of donations doubled first year to 1 million Euros, then next year they tripled for three millions. AwardsMost successful Public Awareness campaign of the year 2006 & 2007, Adprofit & Effie AwardsYear2007