Sometimes, opportunities arise that you simply can’t ignore. Working on City to Sea’s charity campaign for #PlasticFreeTravel proved to be one of those occasions. Our client mix is quite eclectic. From utility companies to financial services providers, from CBD specialists to blockchain projects. We offer social media marketing services to businesses across a wide range of industries and sectors. Being able to support a charity campaign on social media and help raise awareness was a creative challenge we all enjoyed.
Not only was City to Sea’s social media charity campaign an opportunity for us to work within a new sector. It was also a chance for us to use our skills and creativity to do some good.
This is how it panned out.
Winning a Charity Campaign Brief
It all began when we won the #PlasticFreeTravel brief with City to Sea. A timely social media charity campaign that aimed to capitalise on the onset of the summer holiday period. The campaign’s focus was to draw attention to the impact holidaymakers have on the environment by using miniature plastic travel toiletry bottles. You know, the ones that you can take in your hand luggage because they meet the strict size requirements at airport security. Or, the complementary ones you find in hotel bathrooms. Those ones.
Effectively, the brief asked creatives to find ways to advertise, raise awareness of, and encourage Plastic-Free Travel. From our perspective, the approach was clear.
Why do we need toiletries in plastic bottles in the first place?
A bar of soap does exactly the same job at a fraction of the environmental impact.
Plus, you don’t have to worry about getting a bar of soap through security. And, if you’re packing large bottles of shower gel and shampoo in your main luggage, a bar of soap can save you space and weight.
Consequently, we devised our ‘Raise the Bar’ social media charity campaign idea to champion the humble bar of soap. We felt it was the perfect solution to the problem being presented.
More importantly, we turned it into a call to action. Asking people to ‘Raise the Bar’ when it comes to toiletries.
We felt the message was a positive one. So, we invited people to up their game and rise to the challenge of Plastic-Free Travel. We also hoped to encourage people to consider plastic-free substitutions for products they already regularly used at home. After all, charity begins at home.
Charity Does Begin at Home
The insight shown by our social media charity campaign concept really resonated with the team over at City to Sea. They picked it as the winner of the prize brief. However, we politely declined the prize offered.
Firstly, we didn’t take part in the City to Sea brief just because there was a prize to be won. We’ve been taking part in daily OMBs as an agency since March 2019 because we’ve noted there are some distinct benefits to be had by participating in One Minute Briefs. Likewise, we felt that, as a charity campaign, it was important to help share the message and support the cause — more so because it’s one that we firmly believe in. So, when we won, we asked for the prize money to be reinvested in the charity.
Instead, we proposed a counter-offer.
To help develop a social media charity campaign based on our ‘Raise the Bar’ concept.
Raise the Bar: A Social Media Charity Campaign
If it’s within your power or ability to give, do so. If you can give without expectation of receiving anything in return, even better. Ultimately, that’s what charity’s all about. So we offered to create some graphics for the #PlaticFreeTravel charity campaign to be used across social media. It was something we wanted to do because it felt right to do so. No strings attached. Just our way of contributing to the charity campaign and using social media for good.
In addition to our original ‘Raise the Bar’ concept, we created three other graphics for the charity campaign in the same style. Each concept highlighted a plastic-free alternative for people to consider when preparing to travel, as well as key statistical information to help illustrate the larger impact our plastic lifestyle has on the environment.
The culmination of all this collaboration was a set of four charity campaign graphics optimised for various social media platforms (landscape, portrait and square) as well as animated GIF versions of each concept.
Once these are live on the City to Sea channels, we’ll collate them here for you to see! 😉
Collaboration is Key
What began as a collaboration between City to Sea and One Minute Briefs turned into a social media charity campaign collaboration between City to Sea and Social INK (with some added Rich Bayley). All in the name of a good cause.
When it’s something you truly believe in. Something that affects us all. Every contribution. Each act of support. Every little effort goes some way towards having a bigger impact.
If we all do our little bit, we can make big things happen.
Collaboration really is key to the success of any project.
Want some #PlasticFree goodies? Make sure to enter City to Sea’s competitions! Details here.
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