This work is all about re-creating a very iconic Turkish movie that shaped the popular culture by changing its final scene. By doing so we managed to deliver our message in a very natural, relevant and impactful way and created a huge PR around it.

LOSEV is a Turkish health foundation for children who have leukemia founded in 1998.

2018 was the 20th anniversary of LOSEV and the foundation wanted to use that opportunity to raise awareness about leukemia and increase the donations. The main challenge for this campaign was to create big impact with a very limited budget.

The big idea was to create an alternate ending for one of the saddest movie (Title: My Dear Brother-1973) of Turkish cinema history. The film was about a little boy with leukemia. His biggest wish was to have a television at home, his older brothers were trying everything to get it for him, but unfortunately he was dying just before he can watch it.

So in order to highlight the fate changing role of the LOSEV, we've decided to change the famous final scene of the movie with a happy ending. In this new final scene, the big brother brought the television home, just like in the original film, but instead of finding his little brother dead, he waked him up and they started to watch the television together with joy.

The strategy was all about the stressing out the dramatic difference in the survival rate of kids with leukemia. Back in the 70's the average survival rate for kids with leukemia was around %10 but today this rate has increased to 94%. LOSEV played a key role in this period in terms of raising awareness about leukemia by convincing people that leukemia can be treated as long as there's enough specialized hospitals and doctors. Therefore we wanted to show people that if they keep supporting LOSEV they can the fate of many children with leukemia.

The media strategy was mainly focused on digital due to financial constraints. However with the buzz created on social media we managed to get free spots from various TV channels.

To reshoot this new ending scene, the original home was identically rebuilt. Plastics masques were designed to create the faces of the original actors. The son of the legendary star Tarik Akan, played his father’s role. Everyone alive from the original crew passionately chipped in.

We just posted the new ending scene online with literally no media budget. And suddenly, it was everywhere.The full length movie with the new ending was screened again on national TV and in selected movie theaters, opening galas serving as fundraising events for Lösev.

The campaign was launched on November 7th 2018 and ended on December 7th.

The total budget for production and media was USD 37.000. A huge part of the production and media budget has been covered as pro-bono.

Reach :

Twitter: 1.099.195

Youtube: 572.000

Facebook: 597.400

PR Coverage : 771.263 USD

Impact : Donations in Q4 2018 increased 30% compared to Q3 2018.