Insight
Not everyone gets the same opportunities, sometimes people can grow old without getting a chance to be recognised or leave a legacy in this world. Casa Caleb is a nursing home for the elderly; some homeless, many neglected. The facility gets by on contributions, however, rent is high, and the home is looking to buy property to provide a more secure quality of life for its seniors. Casa Caleb needed to raise funds by getting more donations in a sustainable way.
Strategy
In order to obtain more funding and more frequently, OMD had to spread the word in the whole world and because every day there are more causes asking for donations, it needed to bring an idea beyond the cause itself.
It did something to get them out of oblivion, turning their handwriting into typography named after them. The agency asked the senior citizens to write the alphabet with their unique handwriting, then scanned and digitised their traces to create custom typefaces that can be used on any computer. Each font is named after the seniors, so their names are preserved in prosperity. The typefaces are available to be downloaded for $2.
Execution
OMD created RealCharacters.org a font site, where the typefaces could be downloaded, so everyone could know and share the story of these senior citizens.
Publinews, one of the most viewed and important newspapers in the country, published a special edition with the unique fonts in every single headline, including the front page with the most important news in the last 10 years. All of the print ads were designed with the fonts too: http://es.calameo.com/read/0006918064c36b9826942.
Results
There were 23,000 downloads from more than 100 countries around the world in just one month. All the TV channels in Guatemala covered the initiative and there were more than 5,000,000 views, shares and posts in social media in one month.