Transforming War Child UK’s regular giving acquisition with a celebrity-led YouTube campaign

War Child UK, the only specialist charity for children affected by conflict, has been striving towards securing a safe future for every child living through war for over two decades.

The challenge

The majority of donations on their website were one-off. Their existing fundraising strategy was geared towards attracting more of the same.

But to achieve their long term goals, they also needed a regular stream of unrestricted funding – the kind charities can only get through regular givers.

What we did

We recognised the potential of innovation so we proposed a novel approach – a video appeal campaign.

This campaign was spearheaded using creative content from one of their newest celebrity ambassadors, Gillian Anderson, featuring her visit to Ukraine.

We saw the success of the organic video, so we developed a dedicated paid video strategy, continually refining it with new creative ideas and optimisation tactics.

What we achieved

The campaign has been running successfully for over eight months, with excellent results.

Since its inception, this video campaign has been the largest contributor to regular donations, accounting for 25% of all regular donations.

War Child UK committed a significant media budget for video activities in 2024 based on this success.

They also asked for our direction on changes that could be incorporated into the shooting of a second video to build on the first video’s success.

“We have absolutely loved working with Platypus on this video campaign!”, said a delighted Lilian Ainley, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at War Child UK.

“They have been continuously proactive, innovative, and strategic in their approach and this has resulted in some amazing results. The team have taken the time to interrogate results, keeping our organisational strategic goals in mind, and this has led to a series of data-driven optimisations.

“We’ve always felt that the campaign is in really safe hands with Platypus. They jumped onto a reactive opportunity and turned it into a strategic, always on campaign.

“We couldn’t have asked for more!”

This campaign came from Platypus Digital’s role as a key strategic partner in War Child UK’s ongoing digital fundraising.

We saw the opportunity that one of their celebrity supporters represented to increase income, and helped the War Child UK team turn that brand awareness into income – and we can do the same for your charity.

Book a call with Matt to find out how.

Find out how we can help your charity

Fill in the form below, tell us what you’d like to achieve, and we’ll get back in touch to arrange a call to tell you more about how we can help!

“I've worked with the Platypus team multiple times. They're the agency we always go back to because of their broad range of skills, consistently great team, good sense and pragmatism and the fact that hey are always a joy to work with."

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