Hall of Heroes
St Jude
Issue 55 | July 2020
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide: David Lubars Chief Creative Officer, BBDO New York: Greg Hahn Executive Creative Director: Tom Markham Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Martin Staaf
Production Team
Head of Innovation: Vishal Dheiman Interactive Producer: Chava Quinn Director: Andrew Osborne Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe Front End Engineer: Nick Russo QA Manager: Jimmy McGee Junior Copywriter: Sandi Spino Designer: Jason Wong Production Company: Flight School Co-Founder/Executive Creative Director: Limbert Fabian Executive Producer: Taylor Williams Producer: Matthew Baughman Associate Producer: Julia Gibson Marketer: Sara Hebert
Other Credits
Chief Strategy Officer Flight School: Crystal Rix Co-Founder/Executive Creative Director: Limbert Fabian Executive Producer: Taylor Williams Producer: Matthew Baughman Associate Producer: Julia Gibson Marketer: Sara Hebert
Date
March 2019
Background
Unlike most U.S hospitals, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is entirely funded by donations, meaning that the patients and their families never pay a cent — not for treatment, housing, food, or transportation. However, this comes at a price — the hospital needs to raise about $1bn each year to continue to operate. St. Jude asked the agency to help create an innovative way of using technology to break through the noise and reach new potential donors, while raising awareness of their important mission to end childhood cancer. So the idea was to do something that would achieve that, and would also hopefully benefit the patients currently in treatment, by making their experience at least a tiny bit less scary.
Idea
Soldiers who show courage during wartime are memorialized with medals and statues. Yet every day the children at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital display incredible courage as they battle for their lives, and they are not similarly recognized. Their bravery deserves celebrating. The St. Jude Hall of Heroes created something that was only possible in VR — a collection of 60-foot-tall statues and a virtual monument recognizing the inspiring strength of the hospital’s young patients. Each unique statue represents a story, a battle, a team — and at the center, a young patient who never gave up. Visitors can navigate freely in the hall, interact with the heroes, and hear their stories narrated by those closest to them. The Hall is meant to work as a beacon of hope for the patients and families currently in treatment. To show them that it’s possible to beat this.
Results
By sharing the scale of these heroes' bravery with the world, awareness was more than tripled (+213%) of St. Jude’s mission to end childhood cancer. 2019 was the most successful year of fundraising in St. Jude’s history, exceeding their 2019 goal of $1bn, including achieving a +70% increase in digital donations on Giving Tuesday, their biggest fundraising day of the year. The Hall shows VR’s extraordinary power not only as a storytelling tool, but as an empathy tool. The Hall of Heroes will continue to travel the country, to fundraisers, meetings, and trade shows. They hope to continuously add more patients to their collection of heroes to share more incredible stories, and they’ll maybe even have companies sponsor entire new parts of the hall as a new fundraising tool. And most important, for the patients currently in treatment, the hall serves as a beacon of hope and the response has been overwhelming.