Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign

Educational Campaign for Research Capital Campaign


Background:

Children’s was building a new building dedicated to research and was planning a capital campaign to fund the process. Children’s hired Robbie Kemper to research, create, produce and oversee an Educational Campaign to lay the groundwork for fundraising.

Children’s had hired a fundraising specialty firm to build and oversee the metrics of the “ask.” Robbie was asked to attend a meeting with Development leaders in order to create a pamphlet fundraising tool. In this meeting he challenged the idea that a key gift would occur on the strength of a tri-fold brochure. Further, he wondered if the idea of a campaign to fund a research center would resonate with the audience of potential donors.

Children’s has a long history of caring for Children in the Greater Cincinnati area. It continually ranks among the top 10 Children’s hospitals in the US. They are held in high regard by the moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas for care of kids.

Challenge:

The common feeling inside Children’s among the C-suite was that “everybody knows Children’s - so they MUST know of our research successes.” Robbie challenged that feeling noting that Children’s IS known for great care, but may not be known for their research prowess. In order to create a successful capital campaign Children’s needed to understand to what degree there was truly a unified emotionally intelligent landscape.

KemperConnection:

Following the EQ plan developed for Children’s, Robbie Kemper recommended focus groups involving the target market of those in control of directing funds, business owners and a secondary market of their customers: the moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas that were also Children’s customers. The groups were well attended by the C-suite at Children’s. The suspected perception was true. Children’s was held in high regard in the care of children. The only association with Children’s and research drawn by our participants was the development of the Sabin Polio Vaccine. The singular hospital in the Cincinnati market region associated with research was University Hospital at The University of Cincinnati.

KemperConnect Recommendation:

Robbie, with the help of a key Board member at Children’s, recommended creation of an “Educational Campaign for Research.” This title was chosen to overcome the “fear” of advertising then possessed by the C-Suite. Several researchers at Children’s were selected and Robbie Kemper backed by his KemperConnect team personally interviewed them to capture their unique research contribution to Children's and “all people of the world.” Children were carefully selected to photograph for the creative and the magic of emotionally connecting to our audience began. The ads purposefully were classic black and white to remain understated, and were placed in local and regional business newspapers and daily newspapers in the business sections. This was done knowing the secondary audience would also see the ads in these locations. The ads ran for the one year duration of the capital campaign.

Results:

The campaign goal of $45 million was exceeded.