SDG3 target 3.4: By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.

Where: UK

The challenge:

Stark figures show that in the UK alone 1.4 million older people struggle with loneliness and 225,000 older people often go a whole week without speaking to anyone. Research shows that one of the primary factors for an elderly individual having poor mental health and well-being is loneliness. 

The Cadbury brand has a heritage of being a force for social good. In recent times its advertising has showcased the brand’s ability to bring people together but the brand now wanted to take positive action to alleviate this growing societal problem of loneliness.

It needed to create hard-hitting, brand-relevant, awareness-raising activity accompanied by an easily-activated mechanism that allowed consumers to help contribute to solving the problem - either by a donation of money or time. 

The execution:

To achieve these goals we brought a number of specialist skills  to bear on the powerful ‘Donate Your Words’ campaign, in partnership with Age UK. The campaign aimed to create empathy and encourage people to donate their time to have a conversation with an elderly person, or help raise money so that Age UK could better tackle the issue of loneliness. 

Our teams worked on a strategy of ‘storytelling and story doing’. Elements included partnering with Sky for a PR campaign focused on placing TV celebrity Sue Perkins in isolation to highlight the suffering of loneliness. A video capturing the problem of societal loneliness was also created and played to the cast of Channel 4 programme Gogglebox to capture their emotional responses - the content culminated in a call-to-action for the audience to donate their words.

The simple mechanic for participation in ‘Donate your Words’ involved production of a Dairy Milk bar with the famous name removed, leaving simply the brand’s iconic ‘glass half full’ logo remaining. For every one of these special bars sold Cadbury donated 30 pence to Age UK.

The campaign extended to social media, with a Facebook chatbot and Twitter conversation cards that allowed people to donate or volunteer with the charity.

The results:

The campaign succeeded in its aims with wide reach and an impressive volume of responses. Activity generated over 1.2 billion earned impressions and 990,000 people pledged that they would ‘donate their words’ either via the chatbot or directly to Age UK’s website, helping tackle the issue of elderly loneliness head on, through the simple actions of individuals in the community.  

Sales of the bespoke bars enjoyed an uplift of 90% during the campaign period providing Age UK with higher cash donations as a result.