WEBSITE IDEA / WEB COPY / SOCIAL / EMAIL
The Face of Blindness
Client: Standard Chartered Singapore | Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong | Role: Senior Copywriter & ACD
The digital fundraising project I led that literally helped 3000 blind people see again - so easily the most meaningful thing I've done in my career.
The brief
Tanzania has the world's highest level of preventable blindness. So in 2017, 40 Standard Chartered employees from Singapore agreed to climb Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for its blindness charity Seeing is Believing.
My task was to create a digital fundraising idea that linked the climb with blindness and persuaded people to donate.
Insights I based the idea on
Named The Identifiable Victim Effect, research shows that focusing on a single person’s story generates more donations than focusing on a larger number. So I decided to focus on one face to have a greater emotional impact.
Called The Goal Proximity Effect, the closer and more visible you are to your fundraising goal, the more likely people are to give.
The idea
I created The Face Of Blindness, a website that fused the images of an actual blind Tanzanian's face with a mountain. The more money donated, the more the face was revealed, restoring the eyes like we were in real life.
Results
The site brought donations in thick and fast and raised $100,000 USD. Standard Chartered had agreed to doube this. And that $200,000 restored sight to over 3000 previously-blind people in Tanzania.
The landing page
A donation slider showed how many people’s sight your money would restore. For example, slide it to $50 and a pop-up graphic reveals that you'll provide 3 cataracts operations and 6 pairs of glasses. So that's 9 people you helped see again.
UX thinking - optimising the website experience
- Maximizing donations would hinge not just on the story I created, but creating a simplified user experience.
- People are more likley to donate if they can see the tangible difference their money makes. So I wanted a simple way to quantify that difference with the interactive donation slider.
- To leverage The Goal Proximity Effect, I wanted to visualize a numerical level of donations that aligned with the face/mountain graphic revealing mechanism and acted as milestones to the final goal.
The Donation page:
- Click donate on landing page and this donation module allows further options
- An option to donate to one specific climber
- An option to donate in your currency
Where your donation goes
Eye-themed interactive page showing where your donation will go. Roll over one heading and it blurs out the others like an eye focussing. →
Key achievements
Why we're climbing Mt Kilimanjaro
The Recipients
Meet the Recipients Testimonials
After reading through many case studies and interviews with people who Seeing Is Believing has helped, I wrote profiles about their lives to inspire people to donate →
How you can take part
Page leading to:
1/ Donate page 2/ the shareable photo frame (below). 3/ Share on social media
The Seeing Is Believing shareable photo frame
To spread the word to their friends, we allowed people donating to upload their photo and add Seeing Is Believing photo frame to Facebook, IG, or Twitter. →
And of course, the site was optimized for mobile...
Promoting the website - social, email, and posters
Social Media Posts
I created these Facebook posts to drive people to the Face of Blindness site.
Social Media Posts - Blurred vision
Using the visual language of a sight test, these posts replicate what your donation would do - bring someone's bad vision into focus so they see again.
Emails
The first is the email I wrote to be sent out before the climb, creating awareness and directing people to the website.
The second is the email updating donators to the amount raised.
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Posters were created with this attention-grabbing visual and a QR code that sent people straight to the Face of Blindness site.
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