Brief People believe that children’s hospitals are 100% government funded. The reality is that children’s hospitals across Australia rely on charitable donations to treat sick kids. The hospitals treat so many children for such a wide range of injuries and illnesses – cancer, congenital conditions, epilepsy, asthma, broken bones, burns, fevers. It becomes difficult to conceptualise the breadth of health services the SCHF supports and the hospital struggles to emotionally engage donors to raise vital funds. So, to unite Australia behind the hospital we first needed to unite the hospital behind a single cause. Falling donations means less staff, less funding for equipment and fewer grants for research, all of which affects the quality of healthcare and the length of time a child needs to stay at hospital. So, our brief was simple: Find a way to unite Australians behind The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation (SCHF) to increase charitable donations. Our intent, however, was to do far more than this. Strategy We needed to find a cause that every Australian could relate to, and something that was relevant to every child regardless of the illness they were facing. Speaking to Dr. Michael Bowden, Head of Department, Psychological Medicine at Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network we learnt that 50% of kids in hospital suffer severe homesickness, the effects of which are real and profound. He said, “homesickness in children can lead to social and behavioural problems, anxiety and coping issues, and feelings of helplessness … The only cure for homesickness is home.” Our single cause would be to Cure Homesickness. We’ve all experienced the feelings of isolation and helplessness that can appear when you are missing home. As such, homesickness would enable us to unite all Australians and codify our message to Australia. However, we wanted to do more than just unite Australians. We wanted to unite the hospitals. Until now hospitals had raised funds independently. So, with the SCHF we approached seven children’s hospitals across Australia to unify under the cause of homesickness. It was the first time the hospitals across Australia have joined together to raise funds. The target for this campaign would be corporate, individuals and media. Firstly, we needed corporate partners to help bring our campaign to life and spread our message to their audience. However, without individuals supporting the campaign it would not be seen as an attractive CSR exercise for businesses, so individual support was still vital. Finally, with a media budget of zero, we would need to rely on donated and earnt media which means our campaign would need to be equally targeted at pitching for media. To give the sense that Australia was uniting to get sick kids home we needed to permeate across outlets and interests from food and music, to sport and entertainment. Everything was orchestrated to feel like Australia was uniting to get sick kids home. Execution We found that children not only miss their parents while away from home, but also miss things like the family pet or home cooking. So, to inspire a nation to come together to help get kids home from hospital sooner, we told the story of Ali, a homesick little girl who missed her mum’s pasta sauce. Her brother found her note asking for some of her ‘mum’s sause’ and posted it to social media which soon went viral and Australians, the media, and brands united together to grant her wish. However, every scene in the film was scripted, designed and pre-planned to mirror what was going to happen in the real world. The brands that came together in the film launched those same experiences, media coverage, social posts, fundraisers, and products in the real world. • Coles stocked Mums’ Sause in every store the day the film launched • Disney, Marvel and EVENT cinemas held ‘coming home’ film festivals in each state • Assembly Label & Vogue launched an exclusive t-shirt line • Pasta Pantry developed 6 pasta dishes sold in store and via UberEATS • The soundtrack could be streamed We created the Curing Homesickness Foundation to facilitate individual donations and brand partnerships on a national scale. For each major partner we created a multi-channel owned and leveraged communication strategy, with tailored fundraising mechanics and individual communication strategies, harnessing data, spokespeople, influencers and real-life case studies. Results We achieved 100% of our client, SCHF’s, yearly fundraising target within 3 months of launch. Mum’s Sause became the number 1 selling pasta sauce at Coles beating established brands with more shelf presence and huge marketing budgets. Sales were so strong Coles not only committed to keeping it on the shelf for years to come, but they created two additional flavours. We brought 47 brands together to support our new cause of curing homesickness. We earnt 162 million free media impressions including 27 million in the first 24 hours of the campaign. This included over $4.6 million dollars of donated media from nearly every major media outlet including Seven, Nine, Ten, Fairfax, Newscorp, ESPN, JC Decaux, oOh!, Westfield Media, ARN and Nova. We didn’t create a one-off marketing campaign; we created a charity that provides sustainable funding. The Curing Homesickness product range continues to raise over $200k every month for children’s hospitals all around Australia. This new revenue is helping to fund vital equipment, training the next generation of doctors and nurses, and funding cutting edge research. All this is helping to treat children more effectively and faster, now and into the future. Most importantly, we helped to get sick kids back to where they belong – home.