The ‘Life’ gift range was created as a fundraiser for the ‘Cordaid People In Need’ Charity.Life Wine, Life Chocolates, Life Socks and Life Music CD were sold as Christmas gifts to benefit the charity.The twist – these gifts were nothing but empty packaging.An empty corked wine bottle labelled Life Wine. An empty shrink-wrapped chocolate box labelled Life Chocolates and so forth.Every product carried the message: Nothing can be everything. This may seem like nothing to you, but the money you spend on it will mean everything to families in Peru, Malawi and SriLanka.

The ‘Life’ range of gifts was retailed for a single week prior to Christmas, primarily via an e-store (levencollectie.nl) and a mobile store that travelled through Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague.With zero-budget for mass media, the planned publicity was a single (free) full-page ad courtesy of ‘De Telegraaf’ (leading Dutch daily) and (free) online banner ads on hyves.nl (Dutch version of Facebook).

Within a day of the ‘Life’ gift range getting visibility the empty gifts captured the imagination of the public and the media. ‘Life’ gifts were featured on a must-watch TV show that recommended gifts for the season. Write-ups appeared in newspapers. Lifestyle websites and blogs got us publicity online as well.Apart from an 80% sell-out, the client’s big happiness came from their trebling of new members signing up as annual donors.The biggest success comes from the number of retail outlets who now want to give retail space and adopt ‘Life’ gifts as their charity for 2008.