Walk Your Socks Off | Mass Participation Fundraising Campaign
Background
Guide Dogs wanted to expand its fundraising portfolio with a brand-new mass participation fundraising event that could recruit new supporters while giving existing fundraisers a fresh way to get involved.
Unlike the charity's existing third-party and owned events, this needed to be a flexible virtual fundraising challenge that people could complete in their own time, wherever they lived. The ambition was to create an accessible fundraising product with broad appeal, attracting both dog lovers and people who simply wanted to support Guide Dogs' life-changing work.
The Challenge
Rather than asking us to develop creative for an existing campaign, Guide Dogs challenged us to create an entirely new fundraising product from the ground up.
The concept needed to be simple, memorable and easy to complete while standing out in an increasingly competitive mass participation fundraising market. Most importantly, it had to encourage supporter acquisition without limiting participation to dog owners.
The Creative Strategy
The project began with a collaborative product development sprint, exploring audience insight, supporter motivations and participation behaviours before generating and testing a wide range of fundraising concepts.
The process revealed a clear opportunity: create an accessible walking challenge that anyone could complete while giving supporters a tangible goal and a rewarding fundraising experience.
That thinking led to Walk Your Socks Off, a sponsored challenge inviting participants to complete 100,000 steps in one week to help people living with sight loss.
To give the campaign a distinctive personality, we created Mr Whiffy, a playful sock puppet character who became the face of the campaign. More than a mascot, he gave the fundraising product an ownable visual identity and tone of voice that immediately differentiated it from traditional charity challenge events.
The campaign was supported with a fully integrated suite of branding, digital marketing assets, fundraising materials and supporter communications, alongside a branded pair of Guide Dogs socks awarded to everyone who raised £50 or more, reinforcing the campaign idea while rewarding participation.
Impact
Walk Your Socks Off gave Guide Dogs a distinctive new mass participation fundraising product, combining strategic audience insight with a memorable creative idea that encouraged participation and supporter engagement.
By creating a flexible challenge that anyone could complete, the campaign broadened the charity's fundraising offer while providing a scalable platform for future supporter acquisition, community fundraising and brand awareness.