GoodUnited

The Misfit Methods

A nonprofit tries a telepath and ninjas to raise money.

Watch the full campaign · 3:20

The Strategy

GoodUnited helps nonprofits raise money on social media. Most people who visit a nonprofit's website are strangers: they stop by, and they're gone. Someone who follows a nonprofit on Facebook is different. GoodUnited shows a nonprofit who those followers are and helps it ask them to give, right where they already spend their time. The people who buy it lead fundraising at nonprofits, and they're expected to grow donations without being handed a new way to do it.

GoodUnited's buyers aren't short on ideas. They're short on ideas that work. So the campaign shows a nonprofit trying the strangest ones it can find to bring in more donations, before someone brings in the sensible one.

Both spots open at nonprofit headquarters, in a little room with a window into a bigger one, like a police interrogation. Rob is serious, with coffee in one hand and a remote in the other. Kim walks in with her phone. In the first spot, the young man behind the glass is a telepath, supposedly, sizing up the nonprofit's social followers and urging them to donate. He's straining so hard the veins stand out on his forehead. In the second, three ninjas are auditioning. The plan is to slip into followers' houses at night and talk them into giving. Their moves say orange belt, not black. Both times, Kim walks in having found GoodUnited.

The Process

We pitched GoodUnited a range of concepts, and Nick Black, its CEO, liked something in every one. After a good long talk, we all landed on the same pick. Nonprofits chasing donations end up trying every wild idea they can find, just to help more people, and a telepath and a team of ninjas said that best. We called it The Misfit Methods.

We shot it in one day, in a room we also used for our Thnks campaign, redressed for this one. The window between Rob and Kim and the room they're watching is a false wall we built around a big sheet of plexiglass, so it reads like a two-way mirror.

The scripts gave the ninjas a few weapons. Ad platforms can flag weapons, so we took them all away and let the ninjas just do bad moves. That was the joke anyway: these ninjas have no skills at all. It also meant we didn't need trained fighters. Three of us played them: Dan Sullivan, Adam Rosenberg and Brian Bruzzi. We had a blast jumping around like idiots.

Each spot got a full-length cut of about 50 seconds, a 30 and a 15, plus two short reminders where Kim delivers the call to action. GoodUnited ran the ads itself.

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