Barretos Cancer Hospital wanted to let the entire country know of its relevance – currently the largest cancer hospital in Latin America. Patients from all 27 States travel for hours and even days by bus to be treated there. That is when we discovered that there was an airport just 5 miles away from the hospital. But it did not have commercial flights. Could we extol the hospital’s relevance to the point of opening up this airport?

The campaign’s challenge was to show the hospital’s relevance without huge costs. The discovery of the airport was fundamental for this. We stopped creating a simple advertising campaign and instead raised a cause with the potential to become newsworthy.

From then on, the population and the press would be in charge of publicizing the hospital’s relevance and demanding the flight, pressuring the airlines and the Federal Government.

We turned this discovery into our cause and invited people to demand this flight. We sent media kits to opinion makers and asked these important pilots to support the creation of this flight. The support was enormous and the cause was shared by thousands of people in blogs and the social media. Thus, the spotlight was turned to the airport and the hospital.

Over 252 thousand people booked a seat in the Facebook petition. There were 291 million social media views with celebrities as well as common people supporting the cause. 84 thousand emails were sent to the airlines directly from our website.

In just 2 months, the Federal Government included the airport in the Aviation Regional Plan, investing US$ 9.1 million in renovations. And, on March, 22nd, 2014, Passaredo Airlines landed its first commercial flight in Barretos. The Flight Against Cancer had been created and the Barretos Cancer Hospital’s relevance had been corroborated.