RPA Is Asking Facebook Users to Share Memories to Help Kids With Cancer

A constant flow of life achievements and happy moments from your Facebook friends can be exhausting, but RPA is encouraging people to do just that—share life moments on Facebook, from wedding pictures to graduation photos, all in the name of helping kids fight cancer. The work for organization End Kids' Cancer aims to spread a little joy and support, but it also has a larger barrier to tackle—funding. According to End Kids' Cancer, less than 5 percent of all funding for cancer research is put towards pediatric cancer. "The challenge for us was how do we get people to relate to something like this? It's so horrific and unfathomable. How do we communicate this to them and inspire people to participate? It's almost impossible to think about it too much," Dan Roberts, vp, group creative director at RPA, said. "We decided to ask people to share a special moment in their life on Facebook, and post that photo with a message that only a tiny sliver of cancer research funding goes to children's cancer research." From there RPA came up with the idea (with help from Facebook Creative Shop) for #ShareALifeEvent. The campaign asks Facebook users to share a memory or event that is important to them and use the above hashtag. Then users are asked to tag three friends to spread the word about the campaign and hopefully donate to the cause. [kickout id="1"] Frank Kalman founded End Kids' Cancer a few years back after one of his own daughters had been battling cancer and undergone at least 150 weeks of chemo and countless weeks of radiation. Kalman and his family learned firsthand from this experience how little funding pediatric cancer research actually gets. "Many people think that just because the doctors who are at these premier centers are well financed, but it's not. All pediatric researchers are on their own and that's why this kind of effort is so critical to us," Kalman said. Added Roberts: "It really is like a David and Goliath situation. Whether it's Frank and his foundation trying to get money for this cause or children who are battling this disease. It really is such an underdog story. We just keep coming back to this figure, this tiny amount of money that's portioned off for pediatric cancer research, and it's really something we are hoping to change." CREDITS Client: End Kids’ Cancer Agency: RPA President, Chief Executive Officer: Bill Hagelstein Exec. VP, Chief Creative Officer: Joe Baratelli Senior VP, Chief Marketing Officer: Tim Leake Senior VP, Chief Digital Officer: Mike Margolin VP, Group Creative Director: Marlon Hernandez VP, Group Creative Director: Dan Roberts Creative Director: Bang Pham Associate Creative Director: Yama Rahyar Senior Art Director: Hide Konishi Art Direction Intern: Kyle Dempsey Senior VP, Chief Production Officer: Gary Paticoff VP, Executive Producer: Carolyn Casey VP, Director of Digital Production: Dave Brezinski Sr. Digital Producer: Ana Ponce Digital Producer: Cassandra Mai Broadcast Production Coordinator: Elijah Jones VP, Director of Business Affairs: Maria Del Homme Assistant Business Affairs Manager: Luke Richard VP, Director, Content Production: Mark Tripp Assistant Editor: Emelie Claxton Executive Assistant: Alyse Zigman Associate Director, Digital Strategy: Mike Dossett Digital Strategy Coordinator: Emily Puig Associate User Experience Architect: Sabrina Lee Support Specialist: Nick Hayes