Omaze | Virgin Galactic
The Context & Challenge:
Omaze’s fundraising platform offers everyone a chance to dream big and win once-in-a-lifetime prizes while helping to make the world a better place; a sustainable approach to fundraising that allows nonprofits to spend less time and money raising funds and instead focus on serving the needs of their communities while creating a new, inclusive generation of donors. Enter Space for Humanity and its mission to help develop the world’s first citizen astronaut program, ensuring it is sustainable, scalable and inclusive. They believe access to space allows the masses to gain a greater perspective of the earth and deeper empathy for fellow humans. The big conflict in accomplishing this? Raising global awareness and the necessary, monumental funds. Omaze’s trailblazing fundraising model and a partnership with Virgin Galactic offered a novel solution to this problem: send someone to space by raising money to support sending more people to space.
The Execution:
By positioning itself at the center of the cultural zeitgeist, Omaze could get the word out by targeting the broadest audience possible across multiple platforms both paid and organic: social media, SEO, YouTube, Display, connected TV and broadcast TV. This approach ensured that this experience truly walked the talk in democratizing the opportunity for all, while continuing to reinvent online charitable giving in new and fantastic ways.
On the first day alone, Omaze raised over $600,000 to support Space for Humanity. The broadly targeted marketing and media efforts earned notable publicity placements, such as NBC's "Today Show" where Sir Richard Branson shared the experience’s mission and details. To create continual buzz around this once-in-a-lifetime experience, Omaze produced enticing and inspiring creative assets in-house ranging from social media posts and stories, emails to donors and non-donors and videos featuring Branson and Virgin Galactic. On the final day of the experience, the winner – Keisha S. – was randomly drawn from all eligible entries received from around the world. Delivering news of this magnitude to this lucky winner deserved much more fanfare than a casual telephone call. So, naturally, Branson and Omaze traveled to Antigua to offer Keisha the life-changing news with a life-changing surprise – showing up at her front door accompanied by a film crew and a gift-wrapped flight suit.
The Results:
In just 8 weeks, the Omaze donor community helped generate more than $1.7M net in projected grants to support Space for Humanity and their effort to develop the first Sponsored Citizen Astronaut Program in human history. These funds, which will be granted from CAF America, will help Space for Humanity transform perspectives and train leaders to ensure an inclusive future in space.
My Role:
Executive Creative Director and Brand Marketing.