Kunal Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha launch The Wishing Factory's #UltaHokeThalassemiaRoke campaign

The Wishing Factory, a non governmental organisation, launched its #UltaHokeThalassemiaRoke campaign on World Thalassemia Day (May 8), in the middle of a lockdown. Thalassemia Major is a blood disorder, which can reduce life expectancy and comes with a lot of challenges. Patients need blood transfusions every 2-4 weeks just to delay the deadly effects of this disorder. During the current lockdown many patients from low income areas have lost all their savings and can not afford their next blood transfusion. While the blood bags are free, there are other crucial expenses related to the transfusion that can go up to Rs 5000 a month. This campaign was launched to help such patients.

Siriti, the creative agency working with the NGO came up with this campaign and helped execute it. Once the challenge was finalised and the donation system was in place, the agency requested celebrities associated with the NGO to launch the campaign. Kunal Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha helped launch it. Today there are over 2700 posts across various social media, supporting this campaign with their ‘ulta’ pictures to raise funds for blood transfusions where blood bags are turned ‘ulta’. Over 250 people have already donated to the campaign.

Interestingly, this is the second year in a row that The Wishing Factory and Siriti have worked together on a campiagn for World Thalassemia Day. The campaign for 2019 was a challenge to create awareness for testing and that too had a powerful impact. This years campiagn has gone beyond the previous years numbers and its a good sign for the NGO in terms of brand building and fund raising.

“I asked Partth (founder of The Wishing Factory) to share some photos of patients getting the blood transfusion and what struck me most, was an image of a child staring at his overturned blood bag, while waiting for it to empty. This image was playing in my head and when Saurabh, one of our young creatives, suggested using the device of an upside down picture to create disruption, the two images just clicked together. The ‘ulta’ image to represent the life-saving importance of transfusions, where blood bags are turned ‘ulta’, became the core idea behind our #UltaHokeThalassemiaRoke campaign and we are glad that it is raising awareness and funds for Thalassemia warriors,” says Sohan Shah, co-founder of Siriti, the agency responsible for the campaign.

"When Sohan presented the #UltaHokeThalassemiaRoke campaign, we found it simple and surprising at once. We trusted their insights and idea, and went for it. Now here I am, 72 hours later replying to congratulations and support messages, every 5 minutes, almost. We have achieved more engagement and reach than last year’s campaign already. Most importantly, we have managed to support over 100 patients transfusions for this month and it’s just the beginning,” said Partth Thakur, founder of The Wishing Factory NGO and a Thalassemia Major patient himself.

Pradyumna Chauhan, creative consultant for Siriti on the campaign, shared, “We had a very successful campaign for the same NGO in 2019 to create awareness about testing and this year the focus was transfusion. So now we had to make people participate in a campaign for the cause of Thalassemia, for the 2nd year in a row. Sequels are never easy. We went through more than 20 ideas before we arrived at this one and it felt right - doable, disruptive and deeply connected to the cause. We are glad that it is working.”

(We got this information in a press release.)