#EFF2020
The Challenge
The year 2020 will likely go down in history as one of the most fucked up, painful, traumatic, chaotic years of the 21st century. Wildfires raged. Countless loved ones were lost to a senseless pandemic that was handled ineptly. Racial injustice seemed to reach a fever pitch. And yes, murder hornets were a thing.
The Approach
We decided to take our corporate holiday card budget and use it to address some of the mental health impacts of this historically shitty year, by creating a video that sent off 2020 with a rude gesture, and an impactful gesture for mental health.
The idea started with a big middle finger to 2020. But this middle finger would be for a good cause. We invited everyone who watched the video to text the middle finger emoji to 1-877-EFF-THIS, a custom number we bought, just for this campaign and when they did, they would be prompted to make a donation to the mental health coalition from within their messaging app.
All donations received via the text service were routed to the Mental Health Coalition in the US. For our Canadian audiences, we recommended making a donation to the Black Health Alliance.
To kick things off, we made donations of $2,020.00 to both the Mental Health Coalition and the Black Health Alliance.
The Impact
The #EFF2020 video racked up +50,000 views in the first 24 hours. It was covered in Fast Co., Adweek, and Muse by Clio, among dozens more publications and blogs. EFF2020 earned upwards of 2,750,000 total views across all channels, 5,400,000 total social impressions, 164,000 shares, and a combined reach of 14,000,000 impressions.
Comments poured in from around the world, echoing the sentiment of EFF 2020, the creativity that spawned it, and the good cause it helped. Influencers and celebrities, with followers from hundreds of thousands to millions, caught wind of the video and shared it on Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok. We caught about 1,800 new followers, ourselves.
Did our raising middle fingers actually raise money? “Eff-you money”, in fact. More than 1,800 f$%#s were given to 1-877-EFF-THIS – many of them, recurring gifts. In total, EFF2020 helped raise a combined $50,000 to help support the selected mental health organizations in the US and Canada.
The Partners
Production: Station Films
Directed: Brendan Gibbons
Music: Ari Posner
Sound Mixing: Andres Villarreal
The Awards
Shorty Awards, 2021 – Winner, Comedy Video
Clio Awards, 2021 – Health Awareness & Advocacy, Bronze
