Agencies Go Head-to-Head in Challenge to Cure Blindness
Three competitor digital agencies – Luminary, Devotion and Hardhat – are about to take their rivalry to the streets in a battle to see who can run and walk the furthest distance in support of The Fred Hollows Foundation during the month of August.
The challenge is part of the Foundation’s Fred’s Big Run initiative, a virtual fitness initiative where participants set themselves a challenge to run or walk a target distance and raise funds to help the Fred Hollows Foundation restore sight to the needlessly blind.
The three-way agency challenge was initiated by Luminary, whose client portfolio includes Fred Hollows. This year will be the Luminary team’s fourth year of undertaking Fred’s Big Run.
Luminary’s first Fred’s Big Run campaign was in 2020. The idea initially emerged as a way to keep team members’ spirits up and maintain a sense of camaraderie during Melbourne’s second lockdown. To help keep up the momentum, Luminary set up its Big Run up as a virtual tour around Victoria – the hope being that it might inspire participants to bring some much needed tourism to regional areas at the end of the lockdown. Each week the team’s collective distance would be tallied up and the ultimate destination recorded on a map, with a fictional update on towns passed and adventures had along the way.
In 2021, Luminary took on the Fred Hollows Foundation at their own game, with a virtual race from the Fred Hollows office in Sydney to Bourke in outback NSW (the final resting place of Fred Hollows) and on to Luminary’s office in Melbourne.
In 2022, Luminary challenged rival digital agency Revium. This year, they decided to take it up a notch and challenge not one, but two, competitor agencies. Enter Devotion and Hardhat and ‘Fred’s Big Agency Challenge’.
Hartdhat Operations Director, Katy Ross, said:
It’s the first time Hardhat has been involved in this fun and inclusive fundraising activity. The added bonus of a little healthy competition will get everyone going…. and what better cause than restoring sight for someone?
The Big Agency Challenge kicked off on Tuesday 1 August, with a run and walk around Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens ‘Tan’ track. As well as being a launch event for the challenge, it also celebrated the start of Luminary developer Tony Duan’s fourth year of running every single day. Previously a self-declared ‘non-runner’, Duan started his running journey at the beginning of Luminary’s first Fred’s Big Run campaign back in 2020, and has not missed a day of running since.
Luminary CEO, Marty Drill, said:
Fred’s Big Run is such a great initiative and our team is really excited to get behind it for another year. I find it amazing that someone’s sight can be restored for as little as $25! As a virtual challenge, people can run or walk as far as they like, so there’s a really low barrier to entry. And most importantly, it’s all for a fantastic cause.
About Luminary
Luminary is an independent Australian digital agency that has been creating award-winning experiences since 1999. With a portfolio that includes some of the most well-known names in the Australian government, retail and corporate sectors, Luminary’s offering includes digital strategy and transformation, UX design, development, hosting, and digital marketing. The agency specialises in the implementation of large-scale digital projects across leading DXP, CMS and headless platforms including Kentico, Kontent.ai, Optimizely, Sitecore and Umbraco. Luminary’s guiding mission is ‘to make digital bright, and the human experience brighter’.
About Devotion
Devotion is a full-service digital agency based in Sydney. Devotion specialises in digital strategy, development, and marketing.
About Hardhat
Hardhat is an agency of thinkers and creators, drivers and doers, and has extensive experience in the worlds of digital, research, strategy and creative execution. The agency has helped some of Australia’s best known and most loved brands find their secret sauce. Its work is ‘Built on Behaviour’ and it approaches all briefs with innovation and an understanding of the unconscious biases that make people behave in a certain way.
