MPT: Lighting the Way Forward

MPT had money to give and a worthy cause: solar lanterns from Panasonic for the Phaung Daw Oo monastic education organisation, whose students study in villages without reliable electricity. The plan was a single donation event managed by an outside agency.

A one-time ceremony would have earned a day of coverage and been forgotten. The opportunity was to make the donation say something lasting about MPT's relationship with the whole country, not just the capital.

Ruder Finn Era proposed a branded campaign, Lighting the Way Forward, that broke the donation into multiple smaller activities in key rural parts of Myanmar. Instead of one handover, the story unfolded across the country over six months.

The team used documentary film-making techniques to bring the whole story to life, following the lanterns to the communities that received them, and secured MRTV-4 as exclusive broadcast partner so the films reached a national television audience as well as social media. Earned media and social amplification ran throughout.