A Gift with Meaning: The World's Most Intelligent Donkey

In a world increasingly influenced by Artificial Intelligence, where technology is developing at an accelerated pace and everything seems to be becoming more dynamic and complex, many people are asking themselves: is there any real meaning left? In our joint campaign with Caritas Austria, we have combined the best of both worlds and proved that there is still a real meaning in life: the act of giving.

The online shop Schenken mit Sinn from our client Caritas Austria is particularly popular in the run-up to Christmas, especially among older audiences. Gifts can be purchased there, which are then donated and benefit people in need around the world. To raise awareness of the online shop among the younger target group and thus increase their willingness to donate, we had planned something special for December 2023.

We came up with a story that sounded too good to be true: the story of the world’s most intelligent donkey. To do this, we used two AI tools to create film scenes focusing on the donkey and his incredible and unbelievable abilities. We used the AI-tool Runway to visualise the scenes and deliberately chose a surreal, weird and imperfect look to draw attention to the very real problems in the world through the ‘unreal’. The campaign’s voiceover was created using the AI-tool ElevenLabs.

To reach a younger audience, we ran the campaign exclusively on channels that are particularly popular with younger generations: TikTok and Instagram. Aiming at the most efficient campaign performance possible, we focused on sponsored ads to target the audience on Instagram, while leveraging organic reach on TikTok.

With spendings of less than €200, we managed to generate more than 160,000 impressions on Instagram and, more importantly, collect 1,668 donkey donations of €110 each. Proving that even in these fast-changing and technologically demanding times, the spirit of helping each other remains very real and genuine.

In June 2024, our joint campaign with Caritas Austria was nominated at the Best of Content Marketing Awards 2024 in the category “B2C – Society, Environment and Social Affairs – Non-profit”. One month later, the campaign received a nomination at the Digital Communication Awards 2024 in the category “Small Budget Campaign”.