Cause / Film

United Way Romania: Alegeri imposibile

For United Way Romania’s first big digital campaign we filmed the jobs children end up in when they leave school.

As seen inIQads

Client: United Way Romania
Year: 2018-2019
Markets: Romania
What we did: Idea, Copy, Production, Edit, Landing page design, Social, Paid media

The brief

United Way Romania helps 6,500 poor children stay in school. It already had a way to give: text VIITOR to 8844 and donate 2 euro a month. What it had never run was a large digital campaign. In autumn 2018 it asked us to make the first one.

The number behind the brief: 30% of Romanian children leave school before 18. Many of them go into work that is wrong for their age and often dangerous, and most people never see what that work looks like.

The idea

Drop the audience into the job for a few seconds, then ask them to take it away. We called the campaign Alegeri imposibile, impossible choices: survival or development, themselves or the people they love. Our English decks call it Doomed Jobs.

The films put it as an order: “Elimină ‘joburile’ care întrerup școala.” Eliminate the “jobs” that interrupt school.

How it worked

December 2018 to February 2019: four jobs

We shot the films ourselves on 12 November 2018. Four jobs, one ultra-short film each: laundry on the line, cardboard in a sack, a wheelbarrow of firewood, bottles in sacks. There isn’t a child’s face in any of them. You get hands, feet, a piece of string, a star-print school backpack between two sacks. It was enough.

Fata cu rucsac și sticle: a girl hauls sacks of bottles with her school backpack still on.

A school backpack, worn while hauling sacks of bottles.

Adunător de cartoane: a child stuffs cardboard into a sack and drags it away on a string.

A child's hand on the string that drags the cardboard sack.

Copil cu roabă și lemne: a child pushes a wheelbarrow of firewood down a village road.

The laundry film had very little footage of the clothes peg, so we built that moment in the edit from other takes and a zoom in post.

Spălător de rufe: a sheet on the washing line, and a child's feet underneath it.

Every film ends on the same blue card: “Oferă viitor pentru 6500 de copii săraci”, give a future to 6,500 poor children. Under it, the ask: 2 euro a month, by SMS.

The films sent people to a landing page we designed as a job board. Its line: “Bonă full-time, cărătoare de apă, menajeră sau bucătăreasă sunt doar câteva joburi mari pentru oameni mici”. Full-time nanny, water carrier, housekeeper or cook: just a few big jobs for small people. Six children, six “job” profiles, each with its own story page, and a donate form for anyone who preferred the web to SMS. The page told six stories, the films four.

Paid Facebook ads and display banners started on 17 December 2018. United Way Romania posted the films on its own Facebook page, one every two or three weeks, from 20 December to 7 February.

Results

“The first step is never easy, and we had never run a large digital campaign before. That’s why we went to Tuio, for their creativity and the confidence their earlier projects gave us. We can say without hesitation it was worth it: look at the awareness the cause reached and the donations we received.”

Executive Director, United Way Romania

These are the films’ numbers, December 2018 to February 2019.

2,000,000+views of the campaign across channels

+8%donations during the campaign

More than 800%growth in website traffic, from the landing page and extra digital content

88%of donations from the online campaign came by SMS, 12% through the web form

ADC*RO Top 3mention, Digital category, February 2019

Then there’s the TVC we made the following autumn, same cause, same SMS number.