The Brief

A bit of a backstory…

Madeline’s 3-year-old son, Alfred, was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of 2020. Over the next year and a half, her family was left to navigate the childhood cancer journey through COVID lockdowns and quarantine. Isolated in an unfamiliar hospital and city, their eyes were opened to need for kinder, more effective treatments for childhood cancer.

This online charity auction would be Madeline’s way to celebrate her 40th birthday amongst friends and family who weren’t able to support her throughout COVID times. Coming at the same time as at+m marketing’s 40th birthday, we felt this was the perfect community project to take on to give back after four decades of business. So we joined forces and got to work on Madeline’s Story: Online Charity Auction For Childhood Cancer Research.

The Approach

Starting from scratch, the first task on the list was to create a compelling brand for Madeline’s Story - a brand with a sophisticated look that told a story from a mum’s point of view. Our design team eagerly got to work and combined bright colours, script fonts, ‘doodled on’ images, and bespoke icons to develop a captivating brand.

Website Design & Development

The next challenge was to translate the brand into a brand-new website, MadelinesStory.com.au. Our design team used these branding elements to design a website that resembled a mum’s diary, complete with a timeline of events, family photography, journal entries detailing the family’s journey, and more.

Next up, our website development team took over and brought the website designs to life in a stunning, fully responsive website that included the ability to host the online charity auction. Users would be able to bid on prizes while also receiving automated emails notifying them if they had been outbid on an item or won an item. The website would also be able to take payments following the auction through WooCommerce.

Social Media

In order to share Madeline’s story and bring awareness to the online charity auction, we turned to social media. We created brand-new Facebook and Instagram pages where Madeline’s friends and family, and people across Australia, could follow along and learn more about Madeline’s journey after the past couple of years and receive updates about the online charity auction.

Using the branding set forth by the design team, our team created image and video content to explain the meaning behind the auction, gather prize donations, announce new prize donations, generate excitement with countdowns, and more throughout the duration of the campaign.

The Results

The online charity auction for The Kids’ Cancer Project was held from Wednesday the 8th of December to Wednesday the 15th of December (ending on Madeline’s 40th birthday). During this time, hundreds of individuals and businesses donated prizes, bid on the prizes in the auction, and donated directly to the fundraiser.