Legacy fundraising campaign
Médecins Sans Frontières
Looking at the past to anticipate the future.
The Briefing
In 2021, Médecins Sans Frontières celebrated its 50th anniversary. Fifty years of humanitarian missions on all continents to bring medical aid to populations in distress: victims of natural disasters or armed conflicts.
MSF must now look to the future and ensure its sustainability. Fundraising is essential and legacies are an important resource for the NGO. The objective of this campaign was to raise the awareness of donors. Planning today can help save lives tomorrow.
The story we wanted to tell
For 50 years, donors have enabled MSF to continue its missions and save lives. 50 years is amazing, but what’s next? Conflicts and natural disasters will outlive us. And MSF? This is the starting point for our story: look at what we have done thanks to you over the past 50 years. But there is still so much to do. And even if you are no longer here, you can still contribute.
Victor Joie, ProducerFor us, the main challenge was to produce an attractive spot with archives as raw material.
The creative process
MSF wanted us to work from archives, which were naturally of variable quality. This constraint became a strength and forced us to develop a graphic process to erase the defects: a square widens in the center of the image, like an aperture that opens on the reality of the world. An oversized counter shows the years in superimposition. It accentuates the passing of time and the sense of urgency – a feeling multiplied tenfold when the counter exceeds the current year and goes into the future.
Post Production
One key to its success was the sonic approach with the recording of the voice-overs: finding the right tone, commercially fitting but conveying the real emotion.
In this type of clip, the sound design can play an important role. Indeed, here, we’ve used no music, instead a sound construction which accentuates the feeling of emergency and anxiety that the images express.
The spot must not go unnoticed in the flow of commercials broadcast on television. It must challenge, arouse a slight uneasiness, a need to intervene. The sound contributes to this impression and accentuates the emotion of the voice-over.
Broadcast
Initially intended for Belgian TV, the spot was also relayed on the internet via numerous platforms. The success of the clip was such that several other countries asked for the video to be adapted into their languages: Hong Kong, Switzerland, Argentina, Finland…
