The creative idea was simple.

Cancer is happening right now. You can do something about it right now.

Our ambition was to share the personal stories of those affected by cancer. The subject could be a patient, a medic, a researcher or a CRUK volunteer, in fact it needed to be all those people and more.

It was these people's moments that would be most powerful, because they are most immediate and most human. Each moment would make cancer feel tangible and hugely personal, but put together with hundreds of other stories, the collective campaign would represent the overwhelming reality of cancer right now.

No scripts.

No actors.

No sets.

Reality.

We didn’t need a conceit. We didn’t need a concept. We needed to step out of the way and simply draw attention to hugely powerful truths, capturing them brilliantly, then playing everything out across a wide range of media.

By partnering with a documentary production company, we were able to shoot live in hospitals and research centres over 9 weeks, filming over 400 people and consulting with even more.

We captured a wealth of stories, eventually producing 12 TV commercials, 8 social films, 10 radio ads, a host of 48 sheet posters, retail posters, social films and stories, and hundreds of real-time digital posters.

We made over 550 pieces of content in total. All of this for the same budget you’d normally spend on a TV ad and 3 posters.

We designed bespoke executions for each channel and used media to surface contextually relevant stories.

For example, we played out short, intense moments in TV.

Digital out of home told stories as live bulletins (5-10 stories per day for the duration of the campaign), whereas we encouraged people to explore stories more deeply in our social content.

In the first two and half weeks of the campaign, CRUK saw a year on year uplift in the number of regular donators of 46% and a corresponding increase in lifetime value of donations of 45%.

The post campaign analysis showed that 5 out of 8 executions tested scored 5 stars (out of 5) on Brainjuicer’s ‘Emotion into Action’ scale. This puts the campaign creative into the top 14% of ads in the UK based on emotional engagement.

The model of integration was proven – research from Brainjuicer shows that people exposed to three or more different executions are much more likely to feel positively towards the brand.

By continuing this approach, we can engage people more and more with the reality of cancer right now and affect positive feeling towards the brand as well as likelihood to donate.