Today is Red Nose Day in the UK; a day where you shouldn’t be too surprised at anything you see as people get involved in all sorts of daft stunts to raise money for “people living unimaginably tough lives all over the world” in the charity’s own words.

Comic Relief was founded in 1985 by scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian and actor Lenny Henry in response to the famine in Ethiopia. In the 30 years since, the charity has raised over £950m through Red Nose Day events, and the Sport Relief events launched in 2002. Since then, Sport Relief and Red Nose Day have alternated, with Sport Relief running in even-numbered years and Comic Relief in odd-numbered years.

In recent years, mobile has played an increasingly important part in Comic Relief’s activities, both in Red Nose Day and Sport Relief years. Red Nose Day went mobile for the first time in 2009, with a dedicated mobile site, built by Wapple.

Mobile donations
The same year, Comic Relief opened its doors to mobile donations for the first time. Members of the public could text a £1 or £5 donation to the charity, every penny of which went to the charity, after the UK’s mobile network operators agreed to waive their usual charges to ensure that the entire amount donated went to the charity. Because of this gesture, the Treasury also agreed not to charge VAT on the donations. Comic Relief raised £82.3m in total in 2009, though the amount contributed by mobile is not broken out.
In 2010, Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), which powered the text donation service for the charity, reported that text donations had contributed £3.4m of the £31.6m raised to that point by Sport Relief, equating to 10.8 per cent of the total.

The following year, MIG revealed that mobile had accounted generated £15.1m out of a total £74.4m total raised (20 per cent), while in 2012, Sport Relief raised £7.9m via mobile donations, a Sport Relief record.

And last year, with OpenMarket powering text donations, Sport Relief raised over £70m, with more than 7.5 per cent of the total (£5.5m) coming from SMS donations. Over 1.1m text donations were processed over the course of the campaign, with the platform processing more than 21,000 transactions, raising over £132,000, in a single minute, at its peak.

Augmented reality
Comic Relief has also taken to augmented reality (AR) with enthusiasm. In 2013, the charity partnered with Zappar to bring AR to its fundraising campaign for the first time. Consumers who scanned Red Nose Day print ads with the Zappar app could access video content, a Flick the Red Nose game, and interactive functionality which enabled the users to take photos of themselves with the celebrity fundraisers, or wearing a virtual red nose.

Zappar was also involved with last year’s Sport Relief campaign, adding its AR magic to a direct mail campaign for the charity, in which over 1m mailshots were delivered to homes across London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester. Each recipient got a bespoke message, as well as custom URLs linking to sign-up pages based on their location. By zapping the Sport Relief mailer using the Zappar app, users could experience a host of exclusive features, including spoken words from a well-known face. Users could also pose for a picture with the different Sport Relief headgear, medals and flags as modelled by Sport Relief Ambassadors, including Jessica Ennis, Rebecca Adlington and Victoria Pendleton.

The first part of the campaign aimed to encourage recipients to round up their friends and family to run, swim or cycle at the first ever Sport Relief Games, with the follow-up door drop (also Zappar-powered) inviting recipients to make a donation to the charity.

AR also features in this year’s campaign, though this time via a partnership with social AR platform Taggar, which has added interactivity to the pin badges being sold ahead of this year’s Red Nose Day. When viewed through the Taggar app, the badges transform into the disembodied head of comedian Harry Hill. The content changes on a daily basis, with Hill introducing a classic clip from Comic Relief’s archives.

It’s possible to donate to the charity in-app, with a single-click SMS donation. This can be done directly or through the app’s ‘make your face funny for money’ feature. Users can take a selfie, decorate it with virtual props and accessories and then share them online with a £1 donation.

All bets are off as to how much Red Nose Day will raise this year, but whatever the final total comes in at, given our obsession with second screening, it will be a big surprise if mobile doesn’t account for an even greater proportion of the total than in recent years.