Title	#DATADONATE
Brand	3 SWEDEN
Product/Service	3 MOBILE
Category	B04. Business Citizenship / Corporate Responsibility & Environmental
Entrant	FLB EUROPE Stockholm, SWEDEN
Idea Creation	FLB EUROPE Stockholm, SWEDEN
PR	FLB EUROPE Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Björn Lundevall	FLB Europa AB	Art Director
Hanna Tholl	FLB Europa	PR Specialist
David Becker	FLB Europa	Account Director

The Campaign

We developed a process for Three subscribers to turn their unused mobile data into real money, which is then donated to UNHCR, the UN Refugee agency, and its work with the ongoing refugee crisis. The background to the initiative is that many customers do not use all their mobile data each month, which means they have some to spare. Now Three’s customers can choose to transform the leftover data into donations. All they need to do is to log into their user account and decide how much data they want to spare in the current month. Customers contribute by donating data, and Three makes sure that an amount of money equivalent to the data donation is given to charity. This enables up to €5 per customer to be sent to UNHCR each month, and the unused mobile data can be transformed into clean water, food and temporary lodging for refugees.

Execution

At launch, Three’s CEO Nicolas Högberg stated: “As far as we know, this is a new way of donating money to charity. The opening stages of the project will be a bit of an experiment, to be adjusted and further developed continuously – in an open-ended project.” With ambition to create initial organic buzz, extra focus in the media outreach phase was put on global tech-lifestyle media. Our solution suited the areas they cover, and stories often spreads from here. We also focused extra on media and organizations covering CSR and NGO’s, since we could meet an engaged crowd here. At launch #Datadonate was highlighted as an inspiring innovation by media, companies and charity organizations nationwide and globally. Swedish politicians and celebrities got engaged in social media, and diverse parties like Refugee Council USA, TedX Hong Kong and global retailer ASOS all applauded the initiative in their own channels.

#Datadonate have had over 30M media impressions, and reached over 2M followers on Twitter alone, without a penny spent on advertising. Since the launch in Februari 2016, the brand associations mentioned earlier have developed as follows according to the brand tracking (August 2016):? -Trustworthy +6% -Warm and hearty +4% -Honest +9% Contrary to campaigns that ”wants to raise a question”, #Datadonate continuously creates real value for the receiver. UNHCR estimates that a refugee needs 20 litres of water every day to stay healthy. Through #Datadonate, Three’s customers have contributed with 44 000 litres of pure, clean water, which means that over 2 000 refugees have received their daily need. Three’s hypothesis is that this is a scalable investment that pays off and contributes to a good cause. Emotionally engaged customers are more loyal, less likely to leave/switch and are three times likelier to recommend the brand to others.

The Situation

#Datadonate is a 100% PR-driven initiative from Swedish mobile operator Three. In the initiative, we developed a process for Three subscribers to turn their unused mobile data into real money, which is then donated to UNHCR, the UN Refugee agency, and its work with the ongoing refugee crisis. #Datadonate have had over 30M media impressions, and reached over 2M followers on Twitter alone, without a penny spent on advertising. Three’s customers have contributed with 44 000 litres of pure, clean water, which means that over 2 000 refugees have received their daily need.

The Strategy

We named the project #Datadonate in order to build a call-to-action into the concept itself. But we still had one major challenge: Three’s market share is, unfortunately, pretty far from 100%. And we wanted to create engagement from anyone willing to participate. This was solved through an open API and the creation of the #Datadonate app: People in Sweden that don’t have Three as an operator, but still want to support the initiative, can use an app connected to Facebook that quickly finds all their friends using Three, and make them aware of the project. This gives everyone the opportunity to help in turning unused mobile data into clean water, food and temporary housing for refugees. This addition also gave media a greater reason to talk about the project, and we could get extra engagement from people deeply involved in the cause, regardless of mobile operator.