The Garvan Institute of Medical Research is a leading multi-disciplinary biomedical research institute in Sydney. With 600 of the world’s brightest scientific minds working under one roof, collaborating across different areas of research and using the best technologies to investigate diseases, Garvan have revealed causes and treatments for countless diseases including diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, immunodeficiency and autoimmunity.

But Garvan’s breakthroughs rely on continuing donations beyond their current small number of high-value donors. Our brief was to raise mainstream awareness and funding for the Garvan Institute, by bringing to life the unique benefits of their genomics research.

‘Disease Dilemmas’ puts people in the uncomfortable position of trying to choose who they’d donate to – the young mother with pancreatic cancer or the musician with Parkinson’s disease? The teacher with a kidney condition or the student with immune disease? These impossible choices are brought to life as portrait pairings of real people living with different diseases, each execution posing its own unique dilemma that challenges people to think, interact and directly donate online to the Garvan Institute, whose genomics research can help them all.

Genomics research is the secret weapon against everything from diabetes to brain cancer. It’s the key to understanding the underlying causes of countless diseases; to help detect, diagnose, treat and ultimately prevent disease entirely.

As time goes on, Garvin are exposed to more diseases and more calls for help – than ever before. Making matters worse, there are over 5,000 disease-related charities in Australia alone. With so many worthy causes and people asking for donations, how do you decide who to help? ‘Disease Dilemmas’ is a deliberately provocative campaign that highlights this issue and offers a solution. It shows multiple people living with different diseases, and asks the audience a single, uncomfortable question – “Who would you donate to?”.

The campaign CTA ‘diseasedilemmas.org’ directly drives to a fundraising microsite for the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, whose genomics research can help them all.

‘Disease Dilemmas’ features 12 people living with different diseases, each captured against a neutral background, eyes facing camera. It was important to create a neutral canvas that doesn’t try to sway you either way. The art direction is subtle, always in the service of showing them just as they are. These quietly confronting portraits were then put in specific pairings and combinations that made choosing one or the other impossible.

Across print, TV, radio, cinema, social, digital screens and out of home – plus takeovers at major metro train stations and even sports stadiums – we used the unique properties of each channel to impose our dilemmas, challenge the public then driving visits online to diseasedilemmas.org (often via QR code) where our interactive stories continued through a mobile-first experience, explaining how Garvan helped the patients, allowing users to directly donate, wherever they may be throughout the country.

$19,114,883 donated in campaign period

+61% website traffic

87 million impressions

$1.1 million earned media

‘Disease Dilemmas’ generated over 87 million impressions, 1.1 million dollars in earned media and 61% increase in website traffic. Most importantly, the Garvan Institute received over 19 million dollars in donations in the campaign period.