Walk Your Socks Off

Background

Guide Dogs were looking for an agency to help them develop and launch a brand new mass participation fundraising product. With plenty of third party and owned events already in their portfolio, the product needed to be a self-motivated event, that supporters could take on in their own time and space. They asked Killer to advise, and because of our wealth of experience and insight into these types of events, the partnership seemed a perfect fit.

The brief

The brief was very open – it could be any type of event, as long as it attracted new supporters and also provided a new offering for existing ones. The Guide Dogs team were keen to find something completely new, having tested several MPEs in the past. They knew that dog lovers might be a core audience for them, but didn’t want to make the event exclusive to people with dogs – it needed to allow people to involve them if they wished.

The work

We ran a sprint product development workshop with the Guide Dogs team, exploring potential audiences, their motivations and possible personas, before launching into ideas generation around a number of themes. These themes covered a broad mix: from very cause connected ‘sight loss’ to ‘new technology’. The process helped us to focus in on the true brief, ruling out some ideas and teasing out ‘accessible exercise-based activities’ as the key area of focus.

The final decision was to create a sponsored walking challenge, with participants walking 100,000 steps over one week in May, to raise money for people living with sight loss. ‘Walk Your Socks Off’ was the chosen campaign name, with supporters being sent a pair of branded Guide Dogs socks as a thank you if they raised at least £50.

The creative

The charity market is flooded with walking products and events, so when it came to creative development, we needed to find something new and interesting; something unique and with a point of difference, to make the campaign stand out. We came up with ‘Mr Whiffy’, a sock puppet character, who would help bring the campaign to life. The sock puppet represented both feet and walking, and also gave us the opportunity to interact, with ‘Mr Whiffy’ talking to our audience in a playful relevant way. The idea was to make supporters smile, create engagement with the brand, and drive sign ups by making the campaign likeable and fun.

The results

Overall income - £132,961
Average gift - £133
Website registrations - 4,423
Participants - 4,409