Doctors Without Borders: That's Where We Operate

241%

Overall campaign ROI

33%

Interaction rate on videos I produced

1st

Major US awareness push for MSF

From a year-end donor spot to primetime broadcast

My role

Creative Director. Creative direction, strategy, display, video art direction and production, UI and UX

Agency

True North Agency

Client

Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders

Channels

TV, pre-roll, display, social, out-of-home, cinema, email, and print

01 — The problem

Fearless work. Not the best-known name.

Médecins Sans Frontières goes where medical care is needed most, with no political or religious affiliation. The work is extraordinary, but the brand wasn’t the most well-known in the United States. MSF needed a campaign as fearless as its people, to raise awareness and inspire donations.

02 — The spot

That’s Where We Operate.

It began in 2015 as an anthem spot for year-end donors, when giving typically peaks. After early success, we extended it to pre-roll, display, and social, then out-of-home and movie theaters, and eventually primetime broadcast television.

That’s Where We Operate · from donor anthem to campaign cornerstone

03 — Always optimizing

A campaign that never stood still.

With real-time data from the agency’s media and analytics team, the creative kept evolving. A/B and multivariate tests lifted landing page conversion, and when the data showed video was particularly effective for our target personas, I worked with MSF’s video team to gather assets from their library and produce several new spots.

We also redesigned the campaign landing page: responsive and mobile-friendly for the first time, with custom illustration and new video.

Landing page, display, and social creative

04 — Results

→241% overall ROI, helped by production techniques that kept costs down

→33% interaction rate on the campaign videos I produced

→MSF brand awareness in the US higher than it had ever been previously

→New-to-file donors brought in through pre-roll video

Credits

True North Agency · MSF video team