KANSAS CITY
4600 W. 51st Street, Suite 300
Roeland Park, KS 66205
816.868.8320
CHICAGO
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Chicago, IL 60606
312.585.7649
For the third year in a row, the VFW turned to Scenic Road to produce video content for its annual fundraising campaign, specifically a brand anthem video. The goal: to connect emotionally with its national donor base. Scenic created a story in which a veteran recognizes those heroes who are fighting battles long after leaving service. As the story unfolds, we realize that the soldier is telling as much his own story as the story of his brothers.
While Scenic imagined the story of the veteran, we wanted to connect that narrative with a real person – a soldier who served in the military. We worked with the VFW to cast a veteran, and that’s how we came to meet Sgt. Stephenson, who becomes the face of our story.
The video campaign produced a 25.7% increase in the number of donations over the prior year and a 39.9% increase in revenue. The "Heroes" video, when embedded into email, had the highest click-through rate of any email in the campaign, producing more than 20% more click-throughs than the next highest performer. In some audience segments, the click-through rate was more than 3.4%. (Blackbaud 2015 Benchmark on click-throughs for an appeal email was 0.61%.) Visitors to this web page stayed more than 60% longer than the overall average site visit, and the video itself has garnered hundreds of thousands of views across multiple channels.