The Need

Shooting Star Children’s Hospices supports babies, children and young people living with life-limiting conditions and their families.
They asked us for content that would communicate what they do, without compromise.
There are no shortage of videos that convey the good work done in hospices, typically a montage of scenes around the hospice, but Shooting Star wanted Liquona to come up with something new and unique that could cut through, without sugar coating the reality of the tragedy a family goes through with the loss of a child.
We wanted to help. We believe that stepping fully into the client’s challenge is ‘The Liquona difference’: There are a lot of production agencies and freelancers who can make a video, but it takes a creative agency like Liquona to understand the challenge and then come up with something new and unique to meet that challenge, and we wanted to give this project our all.

Discover

How do you tell the story of what a children’s hospice does, without compromise, and with a deep sense of something ‘good’ taking place in the midst of the tragedy?
We start by listening. It was on one of our planning calls, that the client described their work as “Bringing a little light into the darkest of moments”, and it was that remark that started to come alive in our creative scoping process, and if you watch the hero film that we produced – you will see this concept visualised. Our film tells the story of Dylan James and his family. Dylan James tragically died less than a year after first being diagnosed, just weeks before his 4th birthday. In the film, his incredible parents, Alison and Warren, bravely describe their journey and the care they received from Shooting Star. As Alison talks about the different support they received, members of staff representing the Shooting Star team appear on stage holding a candle. Over time, the stage becomes full of points of light and whilst still very dark, faces are increasingly illuminated as each support team is represented on stage, symbolising the wrap around care and light that Shooting Star provided when the unimaginable happened.

Develop

Working to as tight a budget as we could, we were always looking to save costs for the client. One great saving was achieved by working through the charity’s network of partners and supporters to find a suitable filming location, resulting in us using the theatre at Ibstock Place School in Roehampton for the shoot. The school is a valued supporter of Shooting Star and had the perfect venue.
Crafting the telling of so sensitive a story, our senior creative producer Katie had several calls with Alison and the client to ensure that we could faithfully tell the family’s story, whilst also hitting the key messages required for the film to help raise awareness and generate donations for the charity, and within a very short film duration.

Deploy

With a modest dissemination budget, and a strategy designed by our top tier marketing director, David Richter, the paid media campaign reached 432k people!

One of the secrets to successful campaigns is to keep reviewing and adjusting. not to ‘fire and forget’. We label our active management approach ‘Test.Trim.Tailor’. It is by actively managing campaigns in this way that we achieve the results that we have become renowned for.
In this campaign as we tested different videos, placements and messages, we were able to optimise the campaign throughout it’s duration, securing outstanding impact for the client and a return on their investment.
The hero film was used across multiple social channels with short versions and supplementary collateral pointing to Shooting Star Children’s Hospices web page dedicated to Dylan James’ story.

The client told us:

Nick Dobson, Director of Marketing & Digital.

Please, watch their story, share a tear (we all did!) and then please consider donating to Shooting Star here.