Charitable organisation

Breast Cancer Now

Driving awareness for a flagship fundraising event with Reels ads on Facebook

Over the last 20 years, Breast Cancer Now’s "wear it pink" day has become a widely recognised fundraising event in the UK. Taking place during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, thousands of people join together and raise vital funds by wearing pink in their communities to drive forward Breast Cancer Now's mission of world-class life-saving research and life-changing support services.

Challenge

Breast Cancer Now sought to inspire supporters by highlighting the ease of participating by wearing pink. Their ultimate goal was to drive supporters to visit their website and sign up in support of fundraising efforts by registering for a fundraising pack. To help support this initiative and reach as many people as possible Breast Cancer Now added creative built for Reels to their business-as-usual (BAU) digital campaign.

Solution

Breast Cancer Now worked with Meta to develop creative built for Reels ads to test alongside their BAU campaign. They followed Reels creative best practices by building vertical video with audio in the safe zone, and then added some additional creative elements such as text overlays and various transitions to help vibrantly tell their story. Both Reels ads included a strong call to action.

Results

To test the impact of their Reels assets, Breast Cancer Now ran a two-week A/B test comparing the BAU campaign with and without creative built for Reels creative:

The BAU with creative built for Reels was the winning ad set, with a confidence of 76% chance that if they ran the test again it would be the same winner.
The BAU with creative built for Reels drove more traffic to the website, with an 11% lower CPC as well as a 20% lower CPM.
The ad set that included Reels ads reached a younger audience while the BAU-only ad set converted users between 45-54 years old.

Learnings

Placement strategy: New audiences can be reached by extending your placement strategy outside of just Feed.
A/B testing: Leveraging A/B testing measurement solutions can help to compare tactics, seeing which provides a better cost per result.
Build in 9:16 video to make your Reels ads captivating: Reels is a full-screen, immersive video format. To help your creative feel at home here, consider leading with video and resizing it to 9:16.
Build with audio to make your Reels ads entertaining: Audio – whether that's music, voiceover or sound effects – is a key driver of engagement and entertainment on Reels
Build in the safe zone so your message is clear: To ensure that your messaging isn't overlapped by the Reels user interface, keep the bottom 35% of your ads free of key creative elements, text and logos
Once you've mastered the creative essentials, take your Reels ads to the next level by exploring the language of Reels. Adding creative that is built for Reels improves overall campaign performance.