As part of our community partnership with Westpac Rescue Helicopter, they asked us to develop an innovative and creative way to help secure corporate sponsorships from businesses in metropolitan and rural Australia. Securing corporate sponsorship continues to be the lifeblood of the Westpac Rescue Helicopters’ ability to provide this crucial service to regional Australia.
Pressure much? Yes, we thought so too. We knew we had to make this as effective as possible.
Westpac Rescue Helicopter wanted their campaign to place emphasis on the sense of relief countless accident victims have felt when they hear the distinctive sound of the approaching helicopter blades. We began by developing an understanding of the target audience.
The Target Audience
Consultation with our client revealed this to be senior management executives from national and regional companies. A mixture of men and women who come from different backgrounds, experiences, age groups and are highly likely to have a family.
We knew we had to strip away the ‘corporate boardroom’ mindset long enough to appeal to each individual at a raw and fundamentally personal level. So how could we possibly appeal to such a varied and time poor audience who devotes most of their time to making money rather than supporting organisations through sponsorship?
The Solution
Our solution was to use the most powerful means available to us to create emotion- their own imagination.
So, how did we do it? Normally video material is one of the best ways to tell a story in a short space of time and deliver a message using rich imagery supported by engaging dialogue. In this case however, we wanted to do something different. Something that goes one step further, creates an impact and resonates on a much deeper personal level.
Remember when you were a child and your parents would read you a story? You would close your eyes, relax and allow yourself to be taken on a journey using your imagination. You were totally attuned to your parents’ voice while conjuring up your own images of what was happening. We capitalised on this sensation by sound engineering an audio track and developing a script that narrates the scene by a ‘storyteller’- a Westpac Rescue Helicopter staff member.
The storyteller begins by asking the audience to lean back, close their eyes and relax. The audio is then started and the storyteller reads their script at certain time markers during the audio track to help set the scene.
The audio track we produced is the sound of a parent and their two children being involved in a car accident. It depicts the sound of the impact and the immediate aftermath. Its harsh reality evokes the sense of shock, confusion and eventual relief the victims feel when they hear the sound of the helicopter arriving.
The end result? A captivated audience who are taken on a harrowing and personal journey they won’t forget anytime soon. They’ve had a simulated firsthand experience of how the Westpac Helicopter helps regional Australians every day.
Listen to our audio file below:
Our Tip:
Effective advertising is about emotion. As an advertising agency, we develop creative concepts that use emotions to captivate an audience long enough to deliver a message deep in the mind to inspire an action, thought or behaviour.
We do this every day for businesses just like yours….and we love it.
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