Transformed Soap

Every year, Studio Brussel, the national Belgian radio station runs a charity event called ‘Music for Life’. This year’s edition of ‘Music for Life’ was all about mothers on the run. Millions of mothers and children are homeless because of violence and war. To promote the charity event and raise money, we used Belgium’s most watched TV series, Thuis (Dutch for home). The opening sequence shows all the actors, and the accompanying song is all about ‘home sweet home’. We kept the song and graphics but replaced the actors with Ugandan mothers. Viewers were confronted with real mothers on the run. We created five different opening credits; extra episodes on TV and online showed what the mothers had to go through. Even though the campaign was broadcast on only one channel, it was picked up on many more. We had a PR ROI of 350 per cent. In addition, for six days and five nights, three radio DJs played listeners' favourite songs in exchange for a donation. The number of radio listeners increased by 200 per cent during this period. In just six days, €3.5million was raised.