One Marketing: Wish free for education

Children have a right to a good education. The Pestalozzi Children's Foundation has been dedicated to this principle for over 30 years. With its current campaign, the organization is drawing attention to the fact that millions of children still have no access to schooling. Swiss celebrities are leading the way and calling for more education for children worldwide. A first day of school for all!

In mid-September, most households in the German-speaking part of Switzerland received mail from the Pestalozzi Children's Village: In the form of an exercise book, the relevance of education and the work approach of the non-profit organization are presented in a coherent way. In addition to informing and generating donations, the campaign has another goal: recipients are encouraged to actively express their solidarity for disadvantaged children. On the back of the booklet, recipients are invited to make a wish online for more access to education worldwide.

The microsite specially designed for the campaign First-school-day.ch is the actual heart of the continuing communication. Visitors to the one-pager can declare their support for the right to education with small acts. And the countdown is on: Until November 20, 2013, Children's Rights Day, the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation is collecting wishes. In addition to the online gallery, the colored wish cards will be printed out at the Pestalozzi Children's Village and collected in the local "Wish Room." The blog and a campaign newsletter inform about the progress of the wish collection. On Children's Rights Day at the end of November, all wishes are passed on to political decision-makers with the unmistakable message: the Swiss population has not forgotten disadvantaged children and is committed to ensuring that the right to education does not exist only on paper.

The campaign uses a colorful mix of advertising media that lead to the microsite both offline and online. In advertisements, well-known faces call on people to do the same and write a wish for children online. In public transport, spots flicker across the screens and show in a sympathetic way how former first-graders - not least thanks to good education - were given the chance to develop their talents and today pursue their dream job. "With the SMS donation option, passengers can donate a solidarity franc directly from their seat. The thank-you text message to the smartphone includes the link to the campaign page and reaches passengers just at a time when they already have their mobile device in hand and have time to explore the microsite," explains Yong-Jong Lee, Online/Digital Consultant at One Marketing Services. Furthermore, banners, ads on Facebook and Google as well as spots on online TV ensure good visitor numbers to the campaign site. Thanks to the responsive design, the site is just as easy to navigate on a smartphone as it is on a tablet or desktop computer.

Well-known Swiss personalities were recruited as ambassadors for the campaign. On the microsite, they tell their own school stories - for example, you can find out what difficult task Beni Thurnheer had to master on his first day at school, or what punishment primary school pupil and now crime scene detective Stefan Gubser had to reckon with after a prank. The reigning Miss Switzerland, Dominique Rinderknecht, and TV presenter and trained primary school teacher Claudia Lässer also have vivid memories of their school days. With their wishes, they draw attention to the worldwide grievances in education. Beni Thurnheer, who as a member of the foundation's board of directors is very familiar with the organization's fields of activity, wishes the schoolchildren above all good teachers who have been trained to meet local needs, "because simply sitting out school is no use to anyone."

Education enables opportunities in life - with memories of their own school days and wishes for today's schoolchildren, the campaign ambassadors convey in a way that is as simple as it is catchy how important a solid school education is for their future lives.

Responsible at Pestalozzi Children's Foundation: Remo Schläpfer, Thomas Witte. Responsible at One Marketing Services BSW: Balz Farner, Yong-Jong Lee, Ruth Wagner.