How we helped Challenge:Future connect with global youth through beautiful design and powerful stories.

Do you know what’s more difficult than motivating yourself? Motivating young people.

Challenge:Future is a global youth think-tank, but of the kind that’s actually a think-do-tank. By speaking the language of the youth, it reaches out to inspire them to take a hold of their reality. Namely, to participate in tackling the biggest problems of our world.

It’s not easy to propel change, and while the C:F guys realize this, they’re unstoppable in their efforts to do precisely that. The powerful engine of the think tank is the yearly online competition that challenges young people to unleash their imagination and propose solutions to global problems. Along with the big competition, many quick challenges are run throughout the year to keep the youth’s creativity flowing.

Every year the Competition ends with the real deal: the Summit. Then all change-makers, from innovative youth to proactive businesses and engaged policy leaders, meet in one place to put their ideas together – and in practice.

Challenge:Future is also running community chapters around the world and offering a peer-to-peer mentorship platform – Growr. This makes it an awesome global youth platform that invites and encourages young people to take part in the world – and share about it online.

Once you know their raison d’etre, the name Challenge:Future starts makes even greater sense, right?

That’s what we thought too.

Actually, our own Damjan is one of the masterminds behind the initiative. Idealistic as he is, he was one of the four initial people who ran Challenge:Future. With his pouring enthusiasm, he took care that the think tank did not run out of creativity. And he loved organizing the Summit too…

And because the whole Edgar team understands how tough motivating and inspiring others can be, we instantly fell for the quest of Challenge:Future. So it became our mission to help them spread their message to the youth of the world.

Branding and storytelling for champions

Just like other brands, NGOs face a big communication challenge: how to engage their audience. Without the right voice, an interesting story to share and a wide audience reach, no brand can make a difference. And inspiring change in people’s hearts is what Challenge:Future is all about.

To harness a powerful message that sparks love and belonging in global youth, Challenge:Future needed a brand story made of authenticity and enthusiasm. So we took on to find the beating heart of the think tank.

Edgar took care of creating a recognizable and engaging brand identity, complemented with pretty and fun visuals, kickass content and active online engagement. From strategy to implementation, it was all up to us to make Challenge:Future a game-changer.

Awesome visuals were a big point on our to-do list. We focused on illustrations, infographics and comics to share online, as well as printed materials in order to leave a mark in the offline space too.

Embracing transmedia storytelling that we love, we crafted four micro-stories that we illustrated and shared on multiple channels as visual stories. People picked them up instantly, which was further reinforced with social engagement on our side.

Wondering who the main heroes of the stories were? The global youth, of course, who are empowered and are on a mission to find solutions to world problems.

The results for Challenge:Future

How can you measure instant love? We know it’s not possible, but the numbers show at least the surface of it.

30,000 active members from 197 countries. 270,000 lives impacted.

Add abundant organic traffic to that.

What you get is many warmed hearts and inspired minds of young people across the globe.

 

Besides the social proof, the Challenge:Future President, Andreja Kodrin, is also nodding in agreement:

“Challenge:Future without the Edgar team would be yet another NGO. But the guys infused it with a vivid brand that is now recognizable by millions. Everybody loves the hand-made visuals and the creative campaigns.”

Edgar likes practical lessons

Although Edgar is a big boy already, he never runs out of curiosity. So any new project brings him more reasons to investigate and learn how to tell ever more engaging and simply beautiful stories, both with words and visuals.

In the case of Challenge:Future, the project was a special one for the Edgar team back in 2008, when we started working on it. It was our first major project, a chance to work on something truly international – and with a matching global impact. It has remained dear to us till today, which explains our neverending enthusiasm for it.

With the full trust and support of the Challenge:Future’s President, lovely Andreja Kodrin, we could unleash our creative powers in all directions: from branding, design and copywriting to social media engagement and event organizing.

To summarize Edgar’s experience: pure challenging fun!

And here you can see the whole Challenge:Future case study.

How is your brand story doing?

would love to help it bloom.