MND (Motor Neurone Disease) is an incurable condition that gradually causes muscles in the body to waste away – leading to the loss of every physical capability. MND NZ is a charity that supports people living with MND, their carers, families, and health professionals through support, education, advocacy and research. Despite having the highest diagnosis rate in the world, awareness of this condition in New Zealand remains very low. With 95% of funding for essential care coming from public donations, MND NZ needed to educate the public and raise funds to ensure those living with the disease can maintain some quality of life while this incurable condition takes everything away from them.

David’s Unusables dramatised the impact MND has on people by selling household items belonging to someone living with MND (David) in a digital timeline of their deterioration. Starting with recreational items such as bikes and fishing rods, the items became more everyday as time went on to show how many simple abilities were being taken away from him. The items were listed on New Zealand’s leading marketplace as they became unusable, with each listing describing the devastating reasons he could no longer use them. The online auctions were supported by infomercials, OOH, PR, radio, social and digital media.

News media often focus on the immediate: “What’s happened TODAY, and how does it impact us NOW?” A debilitating, long-term disease such as MND, is hard to convey it’s impact when you’re up against more immediate – and arguably newsworthy – issues.

We took the timeline of David’s bodily deterioration, and condensed it into a dramatized timeline, people could access from the palm of their hands via TradeMe (NZ's equivalent of eBay).

The key message is simple: “Now you can see, every single day, the way a body suffers as a result of this debilitating disease.”

We aligned with medical bodies to secure ground-breaking statistics, created editorial content in mock-infomercial style for David Seymour to ‘sell’ his belongings, we contracted New Zealand’s Infomercial queen Suzanne Paul to add an element of celebrity, and we developed a campaign targeting all key media verticals: Television, News, Radio, Consumer, Regional, Social and Digital.

TradeMe (NZ's equivalent of eBay) is visited 1.9 million times everyday with thousands of bids placed every hour, but they had never worked with an NFP in this capacity before. This meant we had a unique media platform to reach a national audience.

Starting on MND Awareness Day (June 21st 2021), we created a TradeMe store – David’s Unusables – where 33 items were listed in a timeline relative to David’s physical deterioration.

Infomercial-style films highlighting the variety of items for sale ran across social media and we leveraged native & digital display within TradeMe to drive traffic and showcase individual items. Paid media units on every listing gave people the opportunity to donate if they couldn’t bid.

A comprehensive PR plan maximised editorial attention with bespoke outreach for broadcast, regional, consumer and health publications.

All 33 items sold, turning every bid into an opportunity to educate NZ on MND.

The listings were viewed 63,765 times, and the campaign reached 1.5 million New Zealanders (total population 5.52 million). The store generated $293,000 in FOC media value.

Even though donations were not a primary objective, this activity directly contributed over $7,000 to MND through the TradeMe store page.

This campaign made headlines, and the headlines told David’s story:

We’ve generated much needed attention for MND through ‘David’s Unsuables’, securing 41 individual PR articles, including from major news outlets such as:

Newshub live at 6pm

Radio New Zealand

Newstalk ZB

NZ Herald

Stuff

More FM

Newshub Online

Northern Advocate

MSN New Zealand

Whangarei Leader

NZ Doctor

And several more regional and digital publications.

This coverage was worth over $350k in advertising value equivalent and had 7.9 million impressions.

This activity has delivered a media ROI of $13 for every $1 spent.