The Challenge

The client, a Global Refugee Agency, runs a global Ramadan fundraising campaign to engage with the public and raise funds towards the plight of refugees. This year, their Ramadan fundraising campaign coincided with the peak of COVID-19. The campaign encouraged people to ‘Imagine’ themselves in the refugees’ position and to show their support during the holy month of Ramadan.

The challenges were twofold:

• The inability to reach target audiences due to lockdowns, which prevented us from geo-targeting the visiting places of large gatherings, especially during the pandemic.
  
  
• The sudden surge of other NGO fundraising efforts, especially local charities.

The Strategy

1. ‘Old-meets-new’ targeting strategy

Combining current audience behavioural insights, social buzz, and past Ramadan insights, we devised a targeting strategy to reach a specific audience. 

2. Glocalising the campaign

To inspire the public and drive audiences to take action, we infused local flavour into the global fundraising campaign to tug at the communities’ heartstrings and purses. 

The Execution
1. The insights on past and current donors

ADA extracted a combination of pre-COVID audiences seen at schools coupled with top religious app usage. We created lookalike audiences based on past insights. 

From current data, we created audience segments based on their interest and affinity with the holy month i.e. Zakat (form of alms-giving), Islam, Ramadan, etc. We optimised our execution to coincide with peaks in audience behaviour.

2. Getting share of wallet through local personalities

We tapped into social listening and saw a vast increase in influencers conversing on Ramadan. We leveraged the social prowess of influencers, with a messaging that would bring the refugees’ plight closer to home through storytelling.

ADA’s Social Media Listening Tool data on influencers during Ramadan

3. Storytelling through local channels

Our central creative theme was “Imagine” — “Imagine a country without people, imagine a mosque without prayers, imagine an Iftar without gatherings”. Partnering with local channels allowed us to harvest their strong influence and understanding of certain cultures. Content pieces were crafted and amplified through their social channels.  

The Results

• Overall donations exceeded target by 37%
  
  
• Overall Cost Per Acquisition reduced by 273%
  
  
• An overall whopping 68% uplift in ROI (*2.5 times above target)
  
  
• 87% positive sentiments from influencers’ community