Macmillan Cancer Support (charity)

Background:

Macmillan Cancer Support is one of the UK’s primary cancer charities, aiding not only those who currently suffer from, but also those affected by cancer.

In 2006 Macmillan created a new service which aimed to help those within the 16-21 year age bracket receive cancer-related support. Called ‘Youthline’, it was an extension of their successful ‘Cancerline’ phone advice and support service. The client’s challenge was to reach people of the target age range with maximum impact from a small budget. Online was raised internally as an option to support press, outdoor and leafleting.

During 2006 Cheeze had worked on other projects for Macmillan, including their re-brand launch/donation recruitment campaign as well as the ‘Better deal’ campaign. Both campaigns were very successful in meeting their respective goals. The ‘Better Deal’ campaign achieved over 2,000 letters written to MP’s across the UK, demanding a better deal for patients needing to pay for hospital parking during cancer treatment. The campaign and the letters lead to an official release from the Health Secretary and was debated in the House of Commons.

Cheeze were briefed to deliver and manage an online display campaign to drive increased awareness and use of the Macmillan Youthline service. The target audience were 16-21, including those who had cancer themselves, or those whose lives have been affected by cancer.


Deliverables:

Rather than be limited by the brief and timelines, Cheeze set out to demonstrate what, not only could be achieved with the specified budget but also what other opportunities were available. By showing Macmillan that additional, relevant opportunities were available, the client was convinced that this was the best channel for them to use, and they subsequently increased their online budgets.

Planning the campaign and researching the audience led to the conclusion that the specific target audience would not react as well to the traditional ‘see, click, do’ experience set out by many other online charity display campaigns.

The ‘ask’ in this case was not one of donation, but was instead one of emotive involvement and disclosure. For this reason, specific interaction-led and discussion-based environments were chosen as lead media placements, with channel targeted network inventory to build frequency across a number of youth-targeted media properties.

Budget constraints demanded creativity in execution. This was evidenced in the solution provided for one of the least expensive yet most effective media, MSN conversation text lines. These were envisaged as being part of a mobile campaign, and to tie this in with online we used the 60 character limit on the MSN product to great effect by using ‘youth’ interpreted language in the form of TXT slang. The examples of this are below:

If u cant talk 2 ur m8s about cancer, talk 2 us. Call Youthline.
Need 2 talk about cancer? Talk 2 us. Click here 2 get support.
Its hard 2 talk about cancer, so talk 2 us. Click 2 get support.
Macmillan Youthline. Click 2 get free confidential cancer advice.

The campaign itself was delivered to meet the maximum number of unique individuals. Through extensive research and in-house expertise, we knew that individuals in the target age range were loyal to the social networking products that both they and their friendship group used.
In order to maximise the campaigns’ reach of the target audience inventory was planned across three of the major social networks in the UK, aiming to meet, greet and interact with a greater cross-section of youth. Coupled with network inventory and instant messenger advertising, the plan was designed to give exposure in the maximum number of discussion based environments. Hence, if they couldn’t talk to their friends about cancer, they could talk to Macmillan.

The Results:


•    The campaign delivered over 7,000,000 opportunities to see, equating to a cost of around £0.002 for each potential touch point.

•    Click rates averaged at over 1% (industry average c. 0.1%), delivering maximum response through carefully produced creative.

•    The online campaign drove 75% of the overall traffic to Macmillan’s Youthline service during the 6 month on, and off-line, campaign.

•    The online campaign delivered 95% of the overall traffic to the Youthline landing page on the Macmillan website and accounted for a large number of the new registrations into the now successful, on-site cancer chat forums.

•    An added bonus was that the campaign also raised over £2,000 in additional direct cash donations.


“Cheeze interpreted the Better Deal media brief perfectly – and at short notice! Return on investment exceeded our expectations and the account management, from planning through to delivery, was impeccable.”

Jenny Evans  - Campaigns Support Officer - Macmillan Cancer Support

Case Studies