In a world of endless charity alternatives, it is hard for a single humanitarian aid organisation to differentiate itself. This was the case for World Vision Finland: despite their important work in developing countries, Finnish people were not familiar with the brand and their cause. In fact the organisation was often mistaken as an optician chain. And who donates to an unknown charity organisation?

In order for World Vision Finland to raise money for children in developing countries they needed to strengthen their brand and get people to sympathise with their cause. The brief was to come up with a creative idea that does not guilt trip with the benefactors and ties World Vision Finland to charity work for children and:

a) Raises brand awareness to drive World Vision’s mission

b) Becomes a phenomenon and a topic of conversation globally

A child in developing countries is an underdog when it comes to security, equality, safety, wealth and dreams. There is a way to systematically solve this problem: Literacy. In Western countries the ability to read is often taken for granted when in fact 770 million people, most located in developing countries, lack access to that basic skill. Without a personal touchpoint, the concept of illiteracy is hard to grasp.

To tackle this issue the creative idea was to demonstrate the experience of illiteracy. Because experience leads to empathy, and empathy leads to compassion and action. Idea was to bring the experience to life by taking over not only major Finnish cities but also social media with unreadable ads.

Because the objective for the campaign was to raise World Vision Finland’s brand awareness, the goal was to reach the general audience in Finland.

In order for the campaign to reach as many people as possible the approach was to use not only World Vision Finland’s own paid advertising spaces but also join forces with major Finnish companies and the most famous social media influencers. To create a proper buzz around the campaign and leave people wondering what’s going on, a decision was made that the campaign would run “incognito” at first before World Vision Finland claims the credit.

To avoid guilt tripping possible benefactors a decision was made not to rely on conventional images and videos of sad eyed children suffering.

Together with Clear Channel, one of Finland’s biggest outdoor advertising companies, we were able to gather over 50 companies who were willing to let World Vision hijack their pre-existing media space, campaign copies and social media posts with gibberish – pro-bono of course. Also Finland’s top influencers joined the campaign pro-bono.

19.11.20 Brief

11.12.20 Creative idea was born

Jan-Mar 21 Partners & influencers on board, materials produced

3.4.21 Campaign began: Outdoor, social media, influencers

6.4.21 Reveal: PR, print advertising, influencers, social media

The campaign was present in 20 cities in a total of 800 spaces making the campaign an actual takeover. Advertising spaces were everything from large outdoor digital screens to roadside adverts. In addition top line influencers posted quirky social media posts that no-one could read. The revealing happened through a press release that was sent to journalists all over the world.

Unreadables become by far the biggest and most impactful campaign in the history of World Vision Finland. In only one week the campaign reached in total 13,2 million people raising World Vision’s brand awareness significantly. What began as a campaign has since become a vital tool in furthering World Vision Finland’s mission and urged a global impact.

Even before the reveal the campaign became a phenomenon on social media creating the much needed buzz around an important topic. With a carefully thought PR strategy 193 media covered the topic in 20 countries from the United States, to Germany and all the way to Australia.

What’s most important is that we were able to get people to sympathize with the cause and strengthen World Vision Finland’s brand position.