Asthma UK needs to communicate the seriousness of the condition to people affected by asthma and boost donations

• A concentrated week of TV promotes the Asthma UK Asthma Attack Card and encourages people with asthma and their families to support the charity’s work
• Response is 60% above target with more than 26,000 calls to the hotline

The challenge
Asthma is a widespread problem in the UK. There are 5.2m people with asthma and Asthma UK works to improve the health and wellbeing of this group.

In 2005 it became apparent that it was getting harder and more expensive to recruit donors. Research revealed that although the condition was widespread, asthma was regarded as a common but not serious condition.

Despite the fact that 1,400 people die every year from asthma in the UK and 90% of these deaths are preventable, this widespread perception was a major barrier to attracting donations.

Asthma UK devised a three-part brief to address the issue. The campaign would have to create awareness of its work, trigger reappraisal of the seriousness of the condition and recruit new donors.

Work to address these goals identified a number of key insights. The first was that only people with asthma, their families or carers were likely to become donors.

The second was that the campaign needed to generate an emotional connection to get people to reappraise the seriousness of the condition.

Thirdly Asthma UK needed to demonstrate its value to people with asthma and finally this would enable a regular donor relationship to be established.

The TV solution
The core of the campaign was the Asthma Attack Card, which was designed to be carried in a wallet or purse and explained what to do in the event of an attack. The free card helped highlight the seriousness of the condition, encouraged sufferers to identify themselves and also demonstrated the charity’s value.

TV would be the vehicle that got people with asthma to call to receive the card but with a limited budget, it would need to be leveraged to the full.

A week-long DR TV campaign would provide the emotional connection as well as the frequency of message needed to generate response. The campaign focused on parents of young children with asthma, as this was the most coherent group among those dealing the condition. They were also the most likely to discuss the advertising and the most likely to make a donation.
Focusing down on a single week also enabled PR activity to work more effectively alongside the TV, with specialist nurses and supporters on stand-by for media interviews.

The creative message was design to puncture any complacency among people with asthma and their families. It was simple and silent to help it stand out in the brash ad break environment.
It started with a blank screen, without a voice over and a series of sentences appearing such as “An asthma attack can be a silent struggle for breath” and asking “would you know how to help?”

The ad explained that 1.1m UK Children have asthma and that someone loses their life to the condition every seven seconds. A voice over at the end explains how to order an Asthma Attack Card while the on screen message sums up the campaign: “Don’t under-estimate asthma, it’s a fatal mistake”.

The campaign ran across 21 stations, with a bias towards kids’ channels. Two commercials were bought in each ad break, a 40-second initial execution at the start of the break followed up by a 10-second version concluding the adverts. In total the commercial was seen 18m times.

Results
The charity answered more than 26,000 calls in response to the campaign, 60% above the target, and each caller was offered a card. In total nearly 47,000 cards were distributed and 90% of callers opted in to receive further communications.

Nearly 2,300 became new cash donors over the telephone, up 17% on campaign targets. These donors are now being tested by telemarketing and direct mail to find the most effective way of converting a one-off donation into a regular donor.

Telemarketing work is currently converting 25% of these one-off donors into regular givers.