Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ana Janković, Strategic Manager, Fusion Communications, Direct Media
To get the biggest prize of all, you have to be prepared to timely understand its importance, and above all, to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. At last year’s KAKTUS and UEPS awards, in which the campaign “I’m fighting too” for the Association of Parents of Children with Cancer (NURDOR) won awards, Direct Media and Fusion Communications were reminded of this truth for the umpteenth time.
Working in the communications industry, we often wonder what is the meaning of our activities. Very soon our everyday life makes us remember it – it’s the opportunity to use our knowledge to help others and change the world we live in. I was lucky to find an exceptional agency and the outstanding professionals and people with whom I can over and over again selflessly dedicate serious time, energy and resources in everything we do, in order to jointly find the optimal way to change society and to influence the anomalies and problems in it.
When it comes to social responsibility, the only important thing for us were results. And results are concrete solutions for problems that we can devise with our knowledge and skills. The way in which we plan the CSR campaigns of our clients, which bring lasting results, as well as partner campaigns with other agencies, speak volumes about us, our knowledge, work and dedication – all that we really are.
Integrated campaign “We care about where our children grow up” for NIVEA has awakened the whole country, and so far playgrounds have been built in 19 cities throughout Serbia, at the initiative of citizens themselves, and more work is still ahead. Cyber Spelling Book for Telenor Foundation was an event that not only managed to bring together public institutions and the private sector in a common struggle to educate children on digital violence, but has also won over the kids who don’t listen to anyone else about this topic with such attention, to the extent that they shared photos of their tickets on social networks to prove they had the privilege to attend this event.
Campaigns like the “One photo a day in the worst year of my life”, which brought the visibility of the problem of domestic violence to a global level, with as many as 49 million views on YouTube, the campaign The most important call, which moved the citizens of Serbia for the first time to think about donating organs, and the Battle for babies which had considerable influence on the reduction of infant mortality in Serbia, with a total value of PR releases of up to €1.2 million, are only a few examples of how Fusion works as a pro bono communication partner.
One of our most important “battles” for the fourth consecutive year is the pro bono work for NURDOR, with the aim to raise awareness in society about the problems that this association is facing. Until recently, our fellow citizens turned away from this “dark topic”, so the statistics that concerns all of us is almost entirely unknown, and that is that a child is diagnosed with cancer every day. Legislation only further hindered the already troubled life of parents of sick children. Then last year, the task outgrew the limits of the possible. In addition to raising awareness and resolving many problems, NURDOR needed to implement a campaign that would enable it to independently collect money within just a few months to build the first children’s oncology center in Niš. Works had to begin immediately. So, as always in this country, we had very little time, a zero on our account, and the absence of any support from the state, even in the form of exemption from VAT.
And we did it. The campaign “I’m fighting too” contributed not only to raise money for the construction of the first phase, so the works could begin on time, but we also raised awareness and created such a buzz in the public that the government also supported the construction with the exemption from tax.
Although in a very short period we won two significant professional awards: KAKTUS award for the best integrated non-profit campaign, and UEPS Award for socially responsible and humanitarian project within the non-profit sector, these are not the kind of awards that I’ve wanted to highlight in this text. The award came much earlier, and will hopefully continue to arrive for a long time. It all began in a seemingly quite ordinary day, after an ordinary meeting. People from NURDOR presented us with a small framed thank-you note that was made for us by the children who will hopefully see better times, and treatment in adequate conditions.
The results that we had set before ourselves as goals when we began all this were simple – more life. And here, we are going towards them! The knowledge that you’ve extended even a single child’s life, that you had brought a smile to a little face, that you contributed to providing them treatment and growing up in humane conditions, it’s worth doing the impossible over and over again.
Therefore, after these 15 years and over 55,000 hours of pro bono work, we can definitely say that some rewards are simply bigger than others. If you know you can make the change you want to see, if only for a moment, you are a rich man.