Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver has launched a series of ads aimed at recruiting men to volunteer for the organization.
The pro bono ad campaign by DDB Vancouver is patterned off its award-winning campaign for Big Sisters that resulted in a 64% boost in traffic to the organization’s website and a spike in volunteer applications.
Roger Nairn, account supervisor at DDB a Big Brother volunteer for the past three years, loved the Big Sisters campaign and felt a similar approach would work well for Big Brothers. Nairn spearheaded the campaign and was also able to provide first hand insights that formed the basis for the creative strategy.
For the male mentorship organization, the campaign adapts last year’s tagline as “Being a Big Brother takes less time than you think.” Like last year’s work, each ad tells a brief story – in eight seconds or less. One ad has the big brother and a young boy driving in the car when the boy asks “is a rodeo clown a good career choice?” The man answers “For some. Not most.” In another the boy is texting and the man replaces the phone with a book.
“It’s very different recruiting men than it is recruiting women, so we love the angle that DDB took. It made it humorous and made it an easy thing for a guy to do,” said Ashlee Milby, marketing and communications manager at Big Brothers.
Milby said Big Brothers tend to range in age from 19 to 32 and are single when they apply. She said that while the perceived time commitment often stops both men and women from volunteering, men worry more about not having enough experience to deal with kids and what they should do with them.
“It’s about being a role model and a friend and hopefully we’ve done a good job of demystifying the relationship,” said Daryl Gardiner, associate creative director at DDB.
