Color The Spectrum
A Mark Rober & Jimmy Kimmel Fundraiser
April 30th, 2021
In April 2021, YouTuber Creator and former NASA engineer Mark Rober partnered up with late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel to put on a three-hour interactive livestream event to honor Mark’s son and raise funds for NEXT for AUTISM. Including Jack Black, Stephen Colbert, Zach Galifianakis, and Mr. Beast. In 3 hours, the campaign raised $3.6 Million, showing the incredible power when celebrities and brands come together for a cause.
GOALS:
Create an interactive experience with donors and celebrities across a 3 hour broadcast to maximize donor engagement.
EXECUTION:
Created multiple points of donor engagement across the 3 hour broadcast; from overlays and donor rewards.
Developing Creative Branding
The first major task, was developing a creative direction for the campaign, to which the Tiltify team was tasked to brainstorm ideas.
Development Process
I carefully watched Mark Rober’s video “The Truth About My Son”, which was shared with our team prior to it’s publishing, to ensure I was not only familiar with the task, but the importance of this incredibly personal project.
One part in particular stood out to me - Mark makes a comment about his son having a super power - “his super power is making people happy”, and one of the ways he does that is through his love of discovering what your favorite color is so he can create a mural of your favorite color - so he can send it to you. I sat there with how much that resonated with me - and began doing research to ensure I met the needs of the client.
Potential Challenges
Through my previous understanding and experience with Autism, I was interested in utilizing imagery or language currently in use or utilized to represent the autism community. i.e, a puzzle piece, butterfly, spectrum. Knowing that Mark had chosen to raise funds for Next For Autism, I decided to stray away from the puzzle piece knowing that the imagery is commonly associated with a different autism non-profit. The butterfly is not as commonly associated, so I landed on focusing on the importance of the ‘spectrum’, knowing that autism is commonly described as being on the spectrum.
With the spectrum in mind, I wanted to involve something personal about Mark’s son to emphasize the importance of this campaign to Mark. At first, I noticed that the larger part of the team was opting to include Mark’s son’s name in their creative suggestions. Knowing that the community around autism support and fundraising can sometimes be polarizing - I took that industry knowledge and opted for not including his son’s name to ensure that no polarizing conversations involved his son’s name
Landing On “Color The Spectrum”
Being so moved by the story of his son’s passion for coloring - I knew I wanted to embrace the personal nature of the campaign. I landed on “Color The Spectrum”. The key indicators of the brand identity were determined by:
SEO & Exposure Potential
Brand Voice & Personality
Safety
Target Audience
After ensuring that the namesake had high SEO across search engines, was a unique hashtag for social and was easily distinguishable from other campaigns.
Brand Partnerships
With a direct partnership with TY Beanie Baby, Ty released a limited time stuffed animal named Max, where all 100% of all revenue was donated to Next For Autism in partnership with Color The Spectrum. In total, $950K was raised during the livestream from donation redemptions alone.
The inside of the tag showcased the Color The Spectrum branding and participation in the fundraiser.
The successful sales of Max lead to the extension of Max’s availability to brick and mortar stores across the United States.
One of my greatest personal achievements was finding Max at my local CVS, opening the tag and seeing the creative identity I had pitched.
““We’re bringing together the biggest stars of social media and old people media, together for a great night, great prizes, and most importantly we’re going to raise an actual ton of money to help some special people who could use it,” Kimmel said.”
