For SOS Children’s Villages India to grow their programming to serve the millions of orphaned and abandoned children, we needed to grow our roster of corporate donors. We created a new kind of influencer, Chatpat, a loveable and persuasive 10 year old kid from the streets, to convince corporations to transform marketing dollars into donations. Chatpat targeted the most high-value corporate prospects, with personalized recreations of iconic Indian commercials. And then posted them to social media, including Instagram to target brands and Linkedin to target the CMOs. With a zero budget media strategy, Chatpat generated incredible brand reach and return.

30 million abandoned and orphaned kids in India live in poverty and face a dim future in India. A problem that’s not solved by the Indian government alone.

Since 1949, SOS Children’s Villages, a donor-based organization, has been helping abandoned or orphaned children everywhere by providing unique family homes, creating a warm, safe environment and a better future for these vulnerable children. Each SOS Children’s Village brings together small groups of orphans of varying ages to live together in a home as a family with parental guidance - getting care, nutrition and education. Currently, SOS Children’s Villages of India provides for over 45,000 kids.

But every year SOS faces increasing costs associated with this important work. The organization severely needed more sizable, stable and continuous donations to sustain and help even more children.

At the center of it all is Chatpat - a lovable and persuasive 10-year old with street smarts who got scrappy to solicit donations from India’s biggest corporations. Chatpat recreated India's most iconic commercials from the most recognizable brands, and then publicly offered those recreations to the brands on social media in exchange for donations to SOS.

He recreated famous commercials for the world’s largest brands, from Cadbury to Tide, turning them into viral films that were shared for their nostalgia and the charm of the kids and cause behind them. Each film made the call to action for corporations super clear, “Hey corporation! We made this ad for your brand. Now do something for my brand! Donate to SOS!”

Chatpat and his gang’s recreations were too charming to skip and resonated with millions of people who connected with these iconic commercials from their own childhood. Including today’s CMOs.

Many NGOs and non-profit charitable organizations depend on corporate relationships for continuous substantial donations. These relationships provide year-over-year donations that are often the foundation of funding.

SOS Children’s Villages has very few corporate donors. Many of SOS’s donations come from individuals and small local businesses; donations that simply aren’t as large or reliable. This scenario hinders growth and opportunity to help more children.

Strategically, to get sizable, stable and continuous donations to sustain and grow SOS’s programs, we needed a way to create lasting relationships with some of the largest corporations; the same corporations that we see everyday investing huge marketing budgets for their brands. So with SOS kids at the center, we created a platform to tap into those marketing budgets, and turn marketing dollars into donations to SOS.

To launch, we first identified brands that had super famous classic commercials and that also were good prospects for donors for SOS - including Mondelez’s Cadbury, Unilever’s Liril and P&G’s Tide brands. Then we assembled a group of Indian street smart kids and together painstakingly recreated frame-by-frame those brands' most iconic commercials.

We brought together big brand messages and the kids of SOS in a way that would both get the attention of the brands and also demonstrate the huge potential of SOS kids.

Through Chatpat’s social handles, we posted these commercial recreations on social media, starting with LinkedIn and Instagram, tagging the brands and CMOs to reach the most influential people in those corporations. As these recreations were shared widely across all social media, we developed a social media response system so we could quickly react to the many other brands reaching out to Chatpat, from Horlick’s to Goodknight.

10-year old Chatpat was immediately loved by the people of India and became a celebrity. His army of fans and followers helped spread his message, turning him into a viral success overnight, impossible to ignore by any brand.

Chatpat increased brand impressions by 1506%, without any paid media. He raised corporate donations by 61.5% from year prior - resulting in over $300k in new corporate donations. Though the recreations weren’t appreciated by every brand (Cadbury ;), the new corporate donors are now committed to more sizable, stable and continuous donations, painting a bright future for SOS. Which means better education, more meals and more homes for children everywhere.

Chatpat is much more than a one-off campaign, he’s become a celebrity endorser that’s inextricably tied to SOS as a brand. He’s created a fundraising model of brand buzz for donations that we can use going forward to solicit any corporations.