Using Repurposed Footage To Fight Sickle Cell
Unable to Shoot Due to COVID-19, We Used Repurposed Footage to Create This New Fundraising Campaign.
Is it possible to create a whole new Children’s Healthcare fundraising campaign with nothing but repurposed footage?
You may recall the campaign we produced last year for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. We interviewed several families dealing with the pain of sickle cell disease.
Who would’ve thought, a year later, we’d be in the middle of a global pandemic, and unable to shoot anything new? But as you can imagine, hospitals weren’t taking any chances while Coronavirus lockdowns were in place.
Using Repurposed Footage
With Sickle Cell Awareness Month fast approaching, we needed to get started on a new fundraising effort. Could we use the same footage to create a new campaign? And what direction should it take?
More Hopeful and Positive
To answer that question, Propellant Media set up focus groups with potential donors (not easy to do during a pandemic).
These were hour-long Zoom calls with spec creative.
The result: the preferred direction was more hopeful and positive.
Even though sickle cell is a horrible and painful genetic disease, the videos needed to be lighter in tone.
Fortunately, one of the sickle cell stories we shot last year had a built-in happy ending. A patient named Xavier had received a bone marrow transplant, and cured of the disease.
Finding a Happy Ending
Xavier’s story gave the campaign a more positive spin, and would hopefully inspire donors to fund research, and help more children in Georgia beat sickle cell.
Digital Marketing Support
Besides creating new videos with repurposed footage, we also needed new banner ads and other digital marketing.
For this we used—you guessed it—repurposed photography.
The campaign is now live, so if you would like to give, you can find the landing page here.
A big thank you once again to Propellant Media and to the marketing team at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
About the Author:
Harry Hayes is the owner and executive producer at Content Puppy Productions, a corporate video production agency based in Charlotte. Before starting Content Puppy, he spent 20+ years as an advertising writer and creative director.
