People around the world have helped to make more than 350,000 wishes come true since 1980. World Wish Day was an excellent platform to showcase the collaborative, grassroots nature of our organization through authentic stories of our key constituents including volunteers, doctors, social workers, donors and sponsors – while engaging thousands of new people in our mission.
Objectives:
- Execute a multi-platform campaign that can be customized and localized by chapters and affiliates
- Establish World Wish Day as an annual day of thanks to all constituents
- Develop a turnkey toolkit for activation. Including:
Videos
Digital Assets
Social Media Resources
Goal: Exceed campaign impressions and engagement results from 2015, in a compressed time frame (1 month in 2015 vs. 2 weeks in 2016)
A World Wish Day campaign toolkit was created for chapters and affiliates around the globe (across 50 countries / and 62 U.S. chapters). The toolkit provided the necessary tools to launch an integrated global campaign focused on appreciation and celebration of the community of people that make wishes possible around the globe through authentic storytelling and unified messaging across multiple platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, web, email, etc.). Most of the elements were created for localization to meet the needs of each affiliate/chapter – which spans various levels of experience and resources, and nearly 50 countries worldwide.
The main storytelling element of World Wish Day 2016 was a series of videos highlighting the first-person stories of our featured supporters. The following people were featured to highlight select constituent groups that help make wishes come true:
- Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Practicing neurosurgeon and CNN Chief Medical Correspondent
- Kusum Viswanathan, MD
Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist
- Nigel Barker & Mazdack Rassi
Internationally renowned photographer, Owner of Milk Studios
- Samantha Vasquez, LMSW
Pediatric Social Worker
- Pete Meyers & Kevin McCarthy
Donors and Event Fundraisers
The Long Beach Polar Bears have raised $5M+ for Make-A-Wish®
- Daniela Bauer-Sawicki, CCLS
Child Life Specialist and Music Therapist
- Asia Breland
Wish granter, wish assist guide, greeter and medical outreach volunteer
- Amanda Christopher
2013 Wish Recipient who inspires others facing difficult medical challenges by sharing her story.
To celebrate World Wish Day 2016, we shared their stories - demonstrating the true impact of a wish experience on all of those involved, told in their authentic first-person voices. These individuals have referred, volunteered, donated, granted and even received a wish experience - all feeling the life-changing impact of a wish-come-true. These stories served as the primary messaging element of the 2016 campaign, in an effort to help us meet our key messaging objectives.
These videos were promoted as part of the global campaign executed by Make-A-Wish International and Make-A-Wish America and were available for affiliate and chapter use. Affiliates and chapters were also welcome to use these videos as templates to highlight their local donors, child-life specialists, donors, volunteers, wish children, sponsors and celebrity supporters.
People around the world were encouraged to show their support for the community of wish granters by adding a custom Make-A-Wish Facebook photo frame for World Wish Day, tweeting their thanks for the wish granting community and sharing their own stories.
The 2016 World Wish Day campaign was very unique because of the very personal stories of our featured constituents who made it clear that it takes a village to make wishes come true. Our chapters and affiliates utilized the templates and modified the creative for their local markets and countries while maintaining a consistent campaign.
Digital Metrics
The 2016 World Wish Day campaign met our objectives and greatly surpassed our goal of exceeding 2015 impressions, even within a compressed time frame.
