MTN (Mobile Telephone Network): PROJECT FREE AD

“One in three South African women in a sample of 40 000 were raped in the past year” – NGO report published by the BBC in 2007.
In this environment, with no funding from government People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) battle the odds against abuse. Corporate sponsorship is crucial to their survival. To commemorate National Women’s Day in South Africa, MTN partnered with Samsung to donate R10 from the sale of every Samsung handset to POWA. The agency was given a R120 000 (£8600) budget to make a once-off television ad promoting the offer. In the end, a fully integrated campaign was produced for free.
The TV ad was made in PowerPoint for a total cost of nothing. The soundtrack was recorded on a cell phone. Production, creatives and account management gave their time for free and their fee was donated to the charity. All other campaign elements were produced in-house for the total cost of next-to-nothing. For example, high gloss shelf stands were replaced by brown cardboard, in-store posters were made from brown paper, retailers’ window displays were plastered with white posters and billboards were made from old white cotton sheets. All communication reinforced the idea of producing everything at the lowest cost possible, so we could donate the money to this worthy cause.
The media for the television ad was donated to MTN by the broadcaster, and MTN donated their planned media spend to POWA, bringing the total campaign contribution to just over R3 million rand (£216 815). This is on top of the revenue generated by handset sales ( 2468 units ). All in all, the agency and MTN made sure that they squeezed every possible cent out of the campaign and used it to help POWA empower women in South Africa.