We targeted parents, caregivers friends, doctors and nurses who carry their smartphones with them everywhere and take happy snaps of the children they care for. They were best placed to see the early signs and our message as they share a common interest in saving children’s lives.

1. Section 12 of the UK CAP code: Advertising sales promotion and Direct Marketing for Medicines, medical devices, health related products and beauty products. Broadly speaking the rules in this section are designed to ensure that marketing communications for the above receive the necessary high level of scrutiny. Advertisers must ensure that they don’t discourage essential treatment and if they are going to make advocacy claims, they should be careful that they are backed up with evidence etc. Given that this campaign on behalf of CHECT is purely for education, and awareness, this code doesn’t apply. http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast/CodeItem.aspx?cscid={71465b52-4ad3-4154-819f-04bb1690fad8}#.VUtJTvlVhBc

2. Section 8 of the UK CAP code: Sales Promotions 8.332 (charity promotions specifically( requires promotions run by third parties claiming that participation will benefit a registered charity or cause must do the following: name the charity or cause that will benefit from promotion, define its nature and objective if it isn’t a registered charity, specify exactly what will be gained by contribution, state if promoter has imposed a limit on its contributions, not exaggerate the benefit to the charity etc. http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast/CodeItem.aspx?cscid={9417c73e-fec7-4212-8b26-aabeecec8460}#.VUtKVvlVhBc

The Childhood Eye Cancer Trust (CHECT) is a small UK-based organisation, fighting to raise awareness and support for children and families affected by Retinoblastoma – an aggressive and deadly eye cancer that affects babies and toddlers. If not detected early enough, it can result in one or both eyes being removed, a devastating consequence for someone so young. Talking to parents of children in remission, we identified that flash photographs in many cases were the key to detection. An eye tumour can reflect back as a white pupil in a flash photograph. And today, smartphones have changed the way in which we take photos and the amount of pictures we take, giving us our opportunity. We wanted to show every parent, godparent, uncle, aunty, relative or friend that they have the tool they need to see the warning signs, in their hand, all day, every day. When it came to the campaign, we chose to use an existing, highly–accessible piece of technology – the smartphone camera – in an innovative way, to show our audience how to detect eye cancer early, and potentially save the lives of children.

With no budget whatsoever, our challenge was to help raise awareness of the organisation, the specific cancer Retinoblastoma, and the key to early detection – against a backdrop of so many organisations vying for attention. Through strategic placements in doctors’ surgeries, hospitals, childcare centres and nurseries across the UK, we targeted people who’d be best placed to see early signs in children who might be affected by the disease – doctors, nurses, nannies and carers

We found a completely new way to use an existing piece of technology that we carry with us every day – our mobile phone. Featuring four real-life Retinoblastoma survivors, our posters asked people to take a flash photo to see what eye cancer looks like. The child’s eye appeared normal on the poster, but an innovative, highly reflective ink made the pupil white in the flash photograph. Thousands of posters were distributed in nurseries and doctor’s offices across London – and in the pediatric section of major UK hospitals – to reach parents of young children, and many professionals who may not be familiar with a rare cancer like Retinoblastoma, such as doctors, nurses, nannies and carers.We then created an online demonstration film, which gained quick traction due to the innovative, newsworthy nature of the campaign, and spread greater awareness of this unique way to use your mobile phone.

With no money for media, our only shot at getting the awareness we needed was with a newsworthy story about a truly innovative, differentiating and life-changing use of tech. That’s what we aspired to do, and that’s exactly what we achieved.

The campaign was picked up in mainstream, medical, tech and parenting press – spreading our message to over 69 million people. Our online video garnered over 900,000 views. And if that wasn't enough, the campaign generated views across all major continents, and prompted like-minded organisations to get in touch and ask to run the campaign themselves – carving out a place for CHECT as a world-leader for the fight against Retinoblastoma.What’s more, we demonstrated that mobile is more than just media here – it is the message, it is the response mechanism, the social distribution network and forms the basis of the insight, giving our campaign cultural relevance today.

Previously, CHECT had focused on the outcome of Retinoblastoma, i.e. images of children with eye cancer. But mobile allowed us to take a completely different approach and focus on early diagnosis – the key to saving the lives of these children. A tumour in the eye can reflect back as a white pupil in flash photographs, which means you can detect it with any mobile phone. To raise awareness of this astounding insight, we created a series of mobile-activated posters that let our audience experience detection for themselves and a demonstration video showing the innovative reflective ink in action which reached more than 900 thousand viewers.