Brave the Shave had been running for a number of years. But the fundraising platform had been stalling. Shaving your head is a big deal and Macmillan were running out of willing shavers within their traditional fundraising audience. It was time to innovate.

So we repositioned the platform to younger and more extroverted fundraisers. A generation of donors who are far less likely to consider Macmillan as a charity to fundraise for. But ones who are far more likely to want to take up the extreme challenge of shaving your head for charity. Our approach was to offer potential shavers a bigger platform to perform their shave on.

We first decided to change the way in which the fundraiser took place. Rather than people signing up as they wished throughout the year and being in charge of setting up their own events - which often happened in small groups - we instead launched a Live Week. A way to rally people together and make them feel like they were part of something bigger. We then encouraged them to share their big moment with the nation on social channels. Giving people more social currency and in turn generating more donations.

In partnership with Global Media, we broadcasted people’s epic efforts across their radio and social brands. As well as featuring real shavers across our direct response fundraising media. This supercharged individuals’ fundraising efforts and gave them the fame and respect their brave act deserved. The recruitment ads were uniquely shot using a two-way mirror to authentically capture our wonderful shavers as they went through a full gamut of emotions; surprise, joy, nervousness and everything in between. All captured in one shot, once the hair was gone it was gone!

Creatives: Joe Stone and Dan Ball

Photography: Amit and Naroop