A study by Millward Brown on behalf of UNICEF has found that its recent mobile marketing campaign ahead of the Rio+20 Earth Summit significantly increased brand awareness and support for the charity.

There was a 15.5 per cent increase in the perception that UNICEF is unceasingly committed to its cause, despite this not being an overt part of the campaign content, as well as a 5.5 per cent increase in favourability towards UNICEF. The research found a 5.1 per cent increase in association that UNICEF improves the lives of children and a 4.3 per cent increase in intent to donate to UNICEF.

The ‘Speak Up for Children’ campaign was created by Ogilvy & Mather UK, Wapple created a mobile website and it was supported by 30 other advertising partners. People were asked to sign an online petition aimed at the deputy PM through 400m mobile banner impressions. The petition received 3,000 signatures from people in the UK, while a similar number from outside the UK also saw the ads and signed.

Millward Brown used its AdIndex for Mobile to compare the views of people recruited before the activity to a group asked during the campaign. Men and women responded differently to the advertising, with brand favourability increasing by 11 per cent and association that UNICEF ‘improves the lives of children’ growing by 7 per cent among women. Brand favourability increased by 1.2 per cent for men, with association that UNICEF ‘improves the lives of children’ increasing by 3.3 per cent. However, men’s donation intent increased by 5.3 per cent, compared to an increase of 2.9 per cent for women.

Stephen Pattison, a spokesperson at UNICEF, said: “As far as we know, no one in our sector has tried anything like this before, so we were really pleased with the result, and so glad that 30 companies from the advertising world agreed to help us with our experiment. We have definitely taken away learnings about the mobile journey, the fact we got so many signatures from outside shows the great reach of mobile, and we would love to do it again.”