How to beat a charity gala by some powerful online campaigning
Recently, a drug came available for children with the progressive muscle disease SMA. It’s a big breakthrough because the first results are positive. But they need more money to implement these results in actual treatments. Therefore, once a year, the foundation hosts a big charity event to raise money. This year due to COVID-19 the big charity event was not an option. Together with Spieren voor Spieren we came up with an alternative idea: a national online giveaway with special items from famous Dutch sporters. If you donate you immediately have a chance to win. This resulted in two kinds of films: the main film with Guus and the ambassadors video’s with the message to donate and win.
The aim of the main film was to make the audience emotionally aware what it is like for children to have this muscle disease and the importance of this drug for them and their development. We found the resilient and sweet 7 year old Guus who suffers from a severe form of SMA. Since he received the medicine Spinraza last year, his physical situation stabilized and he even got a bit stronger.
We wanted to tell the life story of Guus through a serie of intimate film fragments shot by his mother’s mobile phone. Backed up by her encouraging voice we see him grow from baby, to toddler, to the little boy he is today. While we see him go in and out of hospitals to receive the groundbreaking treatment we slowly but steady see progress. It resulted in something beautiful. For the first time Guus was able to do something (without support) that he loves most in the world… Swim! This great triumph we of course wanted to capture in a more cinematic way; so we dived under water with him. This film is the kick-start for the campaign to collect money for more efficient diagnoses and treatments. Therefore sport ambassadors like Sven Kramer, Ron Vlaar and Frédérique Malta teamed up with us to create special ambassadors video’s. Through these video’s we get to know the ambassadors, their story, their special item and more importantly the need to donate. Because there really is no time to lose.
