For the 46,000 small and relatively unknown charities in Australia, increasing public exposure is a daunting task.

In Ad:Tech’s “Making physical/digital campaigns work” Tim Buesing, creative director for Reactive explained how a technology-driven campaign provoked online “buzz” for the Save Our Sons charity — an inspiring story that aimed to involve more agencies and companies in similar projects.

Reactive built a robotic arm that was used to write ‘e-signatures’ of any eager online participants, attracting enough signatures to qualify for government funding and make ‘The Powerful Arm’ the biggest online petition in Australia to date.

The campaign owes much of its success to the “actual physical piece of technology,” said Tim Buesing, but clever public relations strategy further enhanced the project’s exposure.

With much learnt from the experience, Buesing attributed emotional stimulation, immediate reward for online users, use of mobile apps, maintaining the mystery of the technology and not shying away from re-developing an existing idea to the overall success of the project.