After nearly 40 years of tackling Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDs) in Australia, SIDS and Kids has expanded its remit to tackle all sudden and unexpected deaths that occur in children under four.

The facts are alarming: nine babies, toddlers and pre-school children die suddenly and unexpected in Australia each day. That’s 3,200 a year – more than double our national road toll.

As part of taking on this new mission, SIDS and Kids has changed its name to Red Nose, and issued a pledge to the Australian community to reduce the number of preventable deaths to zero.

Keep Left developed the communications strategy to tell this story, frame the problem and start a conversation. Here’s what we did:

In designing the campaign creative, Keep Left took inspiration from a letter written 40 years ago by one of the SIDS and Kids’ founders, Kareene Noelle Fitzgerald, after she lost her 8-month old son to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

In this letter, she communicated her hope that no family would experience what she did. Writing a letter has always been an effective way to communicate something significant and even in today’s digital world, a letter can cut through if you have something important to say.

Keep Left felt an updated letter was the right vehicle to tell Red Nose’s story with gravitas, and clearly frame the problem it’s pledging to solve.

Keep Left brought the Pledge Letter to life through the production of a creative content piece, The Children are Gone, which visually depicts a number of everyday household scenes where a child belongs but isn’t there. We produced a hero version which appears on the Red Nose website, as well as bespoke edits for digital, social and broadcast media. The content was pushed out via a public relations campaign and paid digital and social placement, as well as above the line by an advertising agency. The Pledge Letter also appears on the new Red Nose website and was sent directly to a range of stakeholder groups including Members of Federal Parliament.