Visa Canada has teamed up with The Movember Foundation to help “mo bros” raise funds for the charity.
The foundation holds the annual “Movember” event, which asks men to grow mustaches and raise awareness and funds for men’s health including prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health.
Visa has developed a digital campaign that leverages its partnership with the NHL and NHLPA. Fundraisers can enlist the support of NHL players Patrice Bergeron, Jonathan Bernier, Duncan Keith and James van Riemsdyk in their fundraising efforts through customizable social and mobile tools.
At CA.movember.com/hockeytools, participants can upload their photo to generate a 45-second commercial, a meme or an audio message featuring their photo and one of the players. For example, one of the memes shows Bergeron pointing at the participant’s photo with the message, “[Your name] has a goal. Now, he needs your assist.” Users can then share these with friends and family to drum up donations. For every donation made through Visa Checkout, an online payment service, Visa will donate $10 to Movember.
“[Our NHL sponsorship] gave us a great opportunity to make fundraising easier for participants,” said Nicolas Lopez, head of emerging products – marketing at Visa Canada. “That goes back to the key insight that informs our campaign, which is that for Movember participants, growing the mustache is the easiest part of participating. The hardest part is actually fundraising and asking people to donate.”
“The sponsorship allowed us to give participants an amazing, unique opportunity to be part of a commercial and they’re at the centre of it with an NHL player,” added Lopez.
To keep the campaign fresh, Visa is staggering the release of the digital tools. The memes are available now, the videos will be released on Nov. 5, and the voice messages will be released on Nov. 12.
A promotional video shows the players at a press conference, announcing that they’ve been drafted… “to help mo bros raise money for Movember.” They then talk about how they’ve teamed up with Visa Checkout to give people the tools to help raise donations.
While Visa is aiming to help raise funds for a good cause, the campaign will also allow the company to promote Visa Checkout. The service lets users sign up just once with their Visa credit or debit cards, and billing information. Then, they just have to enter their username and password to complete a purchase on participating ecommerce sites.
“At the end of this campaign, the objective is we will have more involvement in Visa Checkout and a lot more transactions,” said Lopez.
BBDO developed the campaign. Jam3 developed the microsite and FleishmanHillard is handling public relations.
