M&C Saatchi Abel campaign gives childhood back to South Africa’s sick kids

In October 2015, the ICU began a R100-million-plus expansion and upgrade. With most of the funding already secured for the project, the Children’s Hospital Trust called on M&C Saatchi Abel to help mobilise the public to donate R10-million.

By driving donations to a bigger, better paediatric ICU, M&C Saatchi Abel hoped to enable more children to receive treatment sooner, and get back to being children.

The Diagnosis

Do you think the average five-year-old can accurately define the word ‘tumour’?

We’d like to hope not, but the reality is that children with chronic illnesses and critical injuries become all too familiar with medical terms they shouldn’t know. Scary words like ‘dialysis’, ‘ventilator’, and ‘biopsy’ become integral to their vocabulary.

This was one of the premises behind M&C Saatchi Abel’s creative campaign, comprising four elements: a social media campaign, a TV ad, a radio ad and print.

The Treatment

On the basis that young children are often taught the basics of language with learning tools like blocks, M&C Saatchi Abel delivered boxes of alphabet blocks to influencers and celebrities known for supporting humanitarian causes.

With the word ‘tumour’ already spelled out, the campaign invited the influencers to change the word to something positive and share a photo with their followers, citing #GiveChildhoodBack. This was a tangible way to contrast the innocence of childhood with the horror of disease and to reinforce the message that sick kids need to get back home, to ‘normal’ life and healthy learning, as quickly as possible.

In the TVC, the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital asked healthy children whether they knew what a tumour was. Predictably, none of them did. But Cadi de Jager, a former patient at the hospital, was able to give the correct answer in detail – proving, heartbreakingly, the notion that there are some words kids shouldn’t know.

A learning technique that helps children with spelling is breaking a word into component letters to create a rhyme or verse that is more fun – or funny. This technique is demonstrated in the campaign’s radio ads, with kids breaking up words as if to learn them, only to reveal that the words are ‘tumour’, ‘biopsy’ and ‘dialysis’.

In M&C Saatchi Abel’s print advertising, titled ‘Some words kids shouldn't know - tumour, dialysis, biopsy’, the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital used alphabet cards to contrast a healthy childhood with one confined to a hospital ward.

The Prognosis

It can be tricky to communicate about childhood illness, paediatric intensive care, and donations from the public without defaulting to triteness, sentimentality or even shock tactics. This M&C Saatchi Abel campaign, both sensitive and thoughtful, was able to convey a touching set of difficult messages with strength and effect.

Plus, the interim funding targets for the period were successfully surpassed thanks to the generosity and commitment of people from across South Africa – including TV star Cadi de Jager who, with the help of her family and community, raised over R100 000 for the cause.

For more information, visit www.mcsaatchiabel.co.za.