MADRID, SPAIN – Since its foundation in 1999, Make-A-Wish Spain has worked day in, day out, to grant wishes to girls and boys with critical illnesses, accompanying them throughout the long and difficult treatment process, enriching their lives with personal experiences that make them stronger and give them lots of hope and optimism.
Over the years, they have made wishes come true for thousands of children, helping them to meet their favourite performers, to be what they want to be when they grow up by letting them experiencing their dream job for a few moments, to travel to the place they most want to visit in the world, and more.
In the words of Tomás Ferrándiz, Executive Creative Director at Tiempo BBDO, “When Make-A-Wish Spain asked us to collaborate with them and raise awareness about their work in Spain, we felt that we had to come up with an idea that would fulfil a double function – something that would serve as a communications campaign while also granting a wish to a child.” According to Estibalitz Vicario, the agency’s account supervisor, “This has been one of the most exciting campaigns we have had the chance to collaborate on. Of all the children’s wishes, we found one that was shared by four of them: that of becoming an astronaut.”
The agency team came to a conclusion: lots of people are losing hope at the moment because of the pandemic. But if these four children could make their wish of going into space come true, in spite of being critically ill, they would not only be astronauts – they would be an example to us all.
And that was how the ASTRONAUTS campaign came into being, under the concept of ‘Wishes can take you wherever you want’. It was a huge challenge to take on. Was it even possible to send these four children into space? And it got all the more difficult when we discovered that each of them had a different destination in mind: Mars, Alpha Centauri, the Swan constellation and the star Vega.
Pablo Ardid and Dani Correal, the creative team for the campaign, said, “We knew that these children couldn’t actually go into space, but their voices could. So, we contacted the European Space Agency to send their voice messages into space.”
The ESA organised all the encoding of the messages. It also coordinated more than 300 stations around the world to send these audio tracks into space. As a result, the children have not only gone where they wanted to, but their voices will also explore every corner of the universe. These little astronauts took part in a videoconference to experience their voices being launched into space by Julio Gallegos, an astrophysicist with the ESA and a member of the CESAR Programme.
But that wasn’t the end of the action. To make their dream as real as possible, the agency—in collaboration with producer Oxígeno and photographer Pep Ávila and in coordination with Make-A-Wish Spain—created a very special session where the children were able to become real astronauts for a day. You can see a full summary of the day on the Internet in a 2-minute video that has become the central piece of the entire campaign. The action also includes a 30” ad for television, the graphic campaign for magazines and newspapers, the development of the site and different content for social media, outdoor pieces that can be seen around several Spanish cities, and the design of different pieces of merchandise to help raise funds.
Lourdes Valls, Director of The Make-A-Wish Foundation in Spain, says that, “At the foundation, we believe in the power of wishes, so we wanted to transmit the importance of them during the difficult times we are going through with this pandemic. And these children are the best example that, even during bad times, wishes can take you wherever you want.”
You can see full details of the action at www.Astronautas.org and collaborate with the foundation by buying the merchandise designed especially for the campaign, or by becoming a member so that wishes can continue to be granted to hundreds of children with critical illnesses.
