Macmillan Cancer Relief
75% of people diagnosed with cancer were also suffering from financial hardship. This was compounded by the time it could take to receive financial support from the Government.
Macmillan wanted to highlight this with a highly-focused, integrated campaign. I was asked to write two emails to help raise awareness of it: one to MPs, the other to journalists. Yet, all day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that an email wasn't powerful enough.
Inspiration struck after work. Waiting for a late-running friend, I opened a notebook to jot down ideas. ‘No one likes to be kept waiting’ was the first thing I wrote, and it immediately crystallised the idea and its execution.
The idea wouldn’t live in the email, but in the space between the email and destination page. Timing was everything: too long, and recipients may close their browser. Too short, and it would kill the idea of being made to wait.
​
I tested this with all kinds of people: how long would someone watch a loading wheel spin before thinking the link was broken? 3.25 seconds was the average, so we set the delay to 2.75 seconds: enough to get the idea across before the browser window was closed.
The result was an emergency debate in Parliament and a welcome change in legislation for people dealing with cancer.