Perception Changing Marketing Campaign
Changing perceptions to save lives.
Sector Nonprofit
Client Make a Wish Foundation
My Role Marketing, UX Design
Project Time 2 Months
Project Background
During my second school year, my classmates and I got a collaborative project from the Make-A-Wish foundation: to come up with a new and innovative marketing campaign through which the donator’s misconception about MAW’s missions statement could be fixed.
Me and three other students worked collaboratively as a team on this project. My role within the team was to make all the necessary documentation, help with the ideation process and provide assistance to the team lead to keep everyone on track, focused and coordinated.
Make a Wish Charity Service
Make-A-Wish (MAW) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to granting life-changing wishes to children with critical illnesses. They provide a unique, personalized experience that empowers children and brings hope, strength, and joy to their lives. Through collaboration with families, volunteers, and partners, Make-A-Wish creates magical moments that leave a lasting positive impact. Focused on compassion and creativity, the organization works tirelessly to inspire communities and transform lives.
The Problem
Make-A-Wish struggles with public misconceptions about their mission.
Misperception
People perceive MAW as an organization that organizes a fun day out for children that are nearing the end of their lives. MAW’S actual mission is to provide hope and strength to children with severe, sometimes life-threatening illnesses by granting their wish so they can recover and live a full, and happy life.
A sense of Urgency
Because of the misperception about MAW’s mission, there is no sense of urgency to help the children that are in desperate need of hope and strength, which MAW gives through their wish journey program.
The Goal
Design an online fundraising campaign that emotionally engages potential donors by showcasing the transformative power of the Wish Journey
Changing Perceptions
The goal is to change how people perceive MAW’s wish journeys by showing them the months long personalized process that make a wish journey special, personal and powerful for each child.
Urgency Awareness
The fundraising campaign must convey urgency, avoid stereotypical narratives of terminal illness, and highlight the ongoing need for support to ensure these children’s stories continue beyond their diagnosis.
Research & Ideation
Reaching the Demographic
During the initial research phase, we discovered that MAW’s target audience was between 30 and 40 years old and usually had kids of their own. We then discovered that this demographic spends most of their online time on platforms like Pinterest, which opened up a new way for us to reach this audience compared to the traditional methods (TV & Flyers). This discovery made us decide to focus our marketing strategy around Pinterest.
A mockup of how the marketing campaign would look on Pinterest
Feedback Empathization
With our platform and method of marketing established, we decided to focus our efforts on solving one of the two core problems: changing perceptions around the wish journey. We needed to change people’s perception from the wish journey being a final send-off for deathly ill children to the empowering and hope giving boost that the children need to overcome their deathly predicament. To achieve this we focused on empathizing the demographic with the children.
A finished example of a progress report & thank you email mockup for the donators
Our plan to do this was to set up a page where people could read short stories about the various children’s hopes, dreams and history. Now that people can put a name to a face, they feel more directly involved and invested to help contribute to a child in need through the wish journey. It was around this time when I came up with the idea to show a “Thank You” message to donors who contributed to a specific wish journey, where we could thank them and directly show the impact their donation had on the child(ren).
Fundraising bar
Now that we had come up with a solution for the empathy problem, we only had to focus on the last remaining problem: Invoking a sense of Urgency. Life is unfair, sadly this also goes for the various children that MAW wishes to help, to achieve this donors need to see the urgency that a child is in. This is where I came up with my second contribution to the team: (on the creative front) the fundraising bar.
A finished example of a fundraising page we made
I remembered sites like Kickstarter that invoked an urgency by displaying a clear progress goal and time delay on their website. The idea here would be that donors can see how a donation of as little as 5 euros could help turn a kid’s life around for the better. And after donating they would get a progress report a while later with a “Thank You” letter detailing the fate of the kid() they helped.
Prototyping
With the core concept loop firmly established:
1. Get audience attention through Pinterest ads ->
2. Empathize audience with the children through short stories ->
3. Show progress needed to change the life of a child for the better (and then repeat)
We started working on prototyping what the website donation page would look like.
When we’re satisfied with the wireframes of the site, we then divided team members, where one member would remain working on the page while the other half would focus on creating and finishing the campaign book that explain in detail our concept to MAW (I was part of the campaign book work team).
These were the pages I worked on
Project Conclusion
We managed to finish the project in time and delivered the:
1 HIFI of the donation website page, 2 the campaign book (both of which we designed through the use of the brand guide that MAW provided us with) and 3 even managed to make a video to further explain the project.
Sadly, Make a Wish did not choose our project to use for their next ad campaign.
Nonetheless, I am still very proud to have worked on this project and the team members that I worked alongside, and at the end of the day as long as children got help and didn’t have to suffer that is a win in my book.
(And hey, if you’re interested, you can read what they had to say about me down below in the testimonials.)
Impacts
At the end of the project, the team and I provided the Make a Wish Foundation with:
A High Fidelity Concept
Through which our client can experience the advertisement campaign’s look and feel from the audience’s perspective.
A Campaign Book
That explains in detail how our ad campaign concept works.
A Video Pitch
To further explain our fundraising campaign concept
Testimonials
Axel strikes with momentum and purpose. Aware of what makes designs work, backed up by the communication skills to make complex matters obvious. Axel’s eye for efficiency and work ethic make him a valuable team member.
Only one way to describe this person: hard worker. Axel is an amazing team member with great communication skill and likes to make tons of jokes. He’s a man of his word and always delivers quality to his work. Axel was a valuable member of our team.
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