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Challenge

The Winter campaign is the most significant moment in international aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) fundraising calendar. In Winter 2025, it was launching a new creative, ‘The Life Saving Moment’. The film demonstrated that MSF’s ability to provide emergency medical support with speed, including maternity care, containing outbreaks and performing vital surgeries, is only achievable if it has help from public donations. Our media strategy needed to take this creative and drive urgent donations.

Marketing Insight

There were core considerations we needed to make about MSF’s international aid charity audience, seasonality and competitive marketplace when determining how to increase its income during the Winter campaign.

We already knew that MSF’s audience is generally cash rich and time poor. They are also targeted frequently by other charities, especially during this key seasonal period, so achieving cut through was important.

We conducted further research to uncover insights into the media habits of MSF’s audience and found they were centred around deep engagement with exclusive, high-quality content. They have a focus on time-efficiency with an ability to access content and obtain information quickly and easily, including using paid platforms for a convenient route to the right content. And they are increasingly focused on quality news, relying on reliable premium news brands to avoid sensationalised news.

Rather than abandoning traditional media, MSF’s audience integrate it with newer digital channels. For example, a significant portion of this audience still engages with print magazines and newspapers for leisure or business news, but they also extensively listen to podcasts and watch online videos.

In terms of seasonality, we know the UK market generally sees the highest value of donations in the week before Christmas, with 21st December often the highest day for overall donations. Because of this, we knew we could expect a crowded marketplace as other brands across the sector fought for high-value donations.

Media Innovation

We developed a media strategy that used engaging and disruptive media approaches to secure stand-out, making MSF unmissable. Ads ran across proven historic performers, TV, press and radio, while expanding activity across test channels including podcasts, VOD and digital audio.

Building on learnings from Winter 2024 and throughout 2025, we knew the value in delivering a proportion of our budget in peak time bands. As a result, we ran national linear TV activity until 8pm. We also tested BVOD activity across C4 and Sky, using Active Voice targeting to ensure we could both reach our core audience and attribute the activity.

On audio, again our plan made use of linear while podcasts gave us the ability to reach MSF’s audience in a contextually relevant environment for an international aid charity. Increased test budgets in this area meant we could also test Host Reads and Sponsorship Plus within the News & Politics vertical.

Press remains a key channel for MSF and is particularly responsive when the news agenda aligns to humanitarian aid. Across our decades-long relationship with MSF, we have developed a core selection of titles in The Times, Guardian, Observer, The I and Telegraph which continually drive strong performances. Our plan for the Winter campaign maintained a consistent presence within these titles. We ran branded story activity in Telegraph Online, securing 100% matched investment which minimised risk and doubled online reach. We also negotiated free high impact format builds to reduce the strain on MSF’s digital team in creating bespoke formats.

Finally, to drive donations during the peak of seasonal giving, we developed a regionally upweighted campaign to run between 16th -18th December. Partnering with Global, we secured a three-day multi-channel activation including a Classic FM partnership, DAX, podcasts and OOH. For the Classic FM partnership, we created a bespoke ‘Take a Minute’ feature. With hour-by-hour targeting, our OOH activity hit MSF’s audience when they were travelling, at commuter stations, roadside & in retail. Podcasts included contextually relevant titles such as The News Agents, James O’Brien – The Whole Show and Electoral Dysfunction. Finally, DAX activity was hyper-targeted to those with interests in Politics, and War or Conflict.

Accelerating Growth

The campaign exceeded target donor volumes by 21%, driving urgent donations in the fight to save lives around the world in areas overwhelmed by conflict, natural disasters and epidemics.