Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union's 2021 Biela Pastelka campaign by Promiseo used blind-man's buff to drive record-breaking fundraising revenue in
ARCHIVESlovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union Turns a Childhood Game Into a Record Fundraiser
The Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union's 2021 campaign, titled "For the blind and partially sighted it is not just a game," is an integrated public interest campaign created by Košice-based agency Promiseo that uses the childhood game of blind-man's buff to immerse Slovak audiences in the daily sensory reality of visual impairment, driving empathy and fundraising participation for the Biela Pastelka — or White Crayon — annual collection.
Biela Pastelka is the Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union's flagship public fundraising initiative. By August 2021, the collection had been running for two decades, and the campaign published that month represented its most ambitious creative effort to date. Rather than appealing to pity or statistical abstraction, Promiseo anchored the entire campaign in a lived-experience insight: that for sighted people, navigating the world through sound and touch alone is disorienting, humbling, and revelatory — yet for blind and partially sighted individuals in Slovakia, it is simply Tuesday. The campaign's central argument, embedded in its title, is that what the audience perceives as a game is, for the visually impaired, an unending reality.
The campaign ran across integrated formats in Slovakia, encompassing video, key visuals, social posts, GIFs, and Instagram augmented reality filters, as documented by Promiseo Sk. It was conceived and executed entirely within the COVID-19 fundraising environment, when Slovak nonprofit organisations were competing sharply for donor attention and charitable income had come under significant pressure across the sector. According to Bielapastelka Sk, the 2021 edition of Biela Pastelka generated gross proceeds of €234,415.81, reported by Unss Sk as a record in the collection's 20-year history. The campaign's Clapboard Score is 63 out of 100.
ARCHIVEPromiseo identified a single, powerful behavioural insight as the strategic foundation for the campaign. Blind-man's buff — known in Slovak as slepá baba — is a game universally familiar to Slovak audiences, one in which a blindfolded participant must orient themselves using only hearing and touch. The agency recognised that this shared cultural reference could function as a bridge: it gave sighted donors an immediate, personally retrievable analogy for the disorientation that defines the daily lives of blind and partially sighted people in Slovakia.
The strategic context was acute. As documented by promiseo.sk, the campaign launched during the COVID-19 period, when nonprofit fundraising across Slovakia faced intensified competition for a contracting pool of donor attention and discretionary giving. Organisations including Úsmev ako dar and Depaul Slovakia were competing for visibility and charitable support in an environment shaped by pandemic fatigue and economic uncertainty. Against this backdrop, Biela Pastelka required more than awareness — it needed a campaign capable of converting understanding into financial commitment.
The strategic choice to lead with a social experiment and documentary format, rather than conventional cause-advertising, was deliberate. According to Strategie Hnonline Sk, the campaign's creative framework invited audiences to experience sensory limitation firsthand before asking them to give. This sequence — experience, then ask — reversed the conventional charity appeal model and positioned the donation not as an act of sympathy but as a response to genuine comprehension. The gross-to-net retention structure of Biela Pastelka, which according to unss.sk retains approximately 86.6 percent of gross proceeds after collection administration, production, processing, and logistics, meant that creative efficiency translated directly into net impact for Slovak blind and partially sighted communities.
Promiseo built the campaign's creative execution around a documentary and social experiment format. The central video asset places sighted participants in the position of a blindfolded person navigating an unfamiliar environment using only sound and touch, directly replicating the mechanics of blind-man's buff while grounding the experience in the real perceptual world of blind and partially sighted individuals in Slovakia. The format refuses sensationalism; its power derives from close observation and the visible discomfort of participants confronting a reality they had not previously considered.
Creative direction was led by Andrea Liszkai, with copywriting by Mária Duffeková — both credited by promiseo.sk and strategie.Hnonline Sk. Graphic design was handled by Viktor Feher, social media by Róbert Potoma, and account management by Tomáš Šmelko and Nikola Fedorjaková, as documented by strategie.hnonline.sk. The production company was Promiseo itself, indicating that the agency retained end-to-end creative and production control — an arrangement that preserved tonal consistency across the campaign's integrated asset suite.
Beyond the core video, the campaign extended into key visuals, social posts, GIFs, and Instagram augmented reality filters, as recorded by promiseo.sk. The AR filter element is particularly notable for a 2021 Slovak public interest campaign: it invited social media users to experience a simulated version of visual impairment through their own device cameras, extending the empathy mechanism of the live social experiment into a self-directed digital format. The White Crayon — Biela Pastelka — itself functions as a visual metaphor threaded through the campaign's graphic identity: a crayon that, unlike its colourful counterparts, leaves no visible mark on white paper, rendering its output invisible to those who rely on colour alone to perceive it.
The 2021 Biela Pastelka campaign delivered measurable results that are publicly documented by multiple named sources. According to unss.sk and bielapastelka.sk, the collection generated gross proceeds of €234,415.81 and net proceeds of €203,037.04 in 2021 — figures reported by unss.sk as the highest in the collection's 20-year history. Promiseo reported a 23 percent year-on-year increase in searches associated with the campaign, as cited by Prokop Online, indicating that the integrated creative work generated organic discovery beyond its paid and earned distribution.
The trajectory continued beyond the campaign year. According to unss.sk, gross proceeds rose to €258,334.26 in 2022, with net proceeds reaching €223,690.80 — a 10.2 percent increase on 2021 net figures, per unss.sk. This sustained growth suggests the 2021 campaign contributed to a durable shift in donor engagement with Biela Pastelka in Slovakia, not merely a one-cycle spike. For context, bielapastelka.sk records that the 2018 collection — the platform's 16th edition — generated €181,155.87 gross, placing the 2021 result approximately 29 percent higher than that comparable historical benchmark.
No verified third-party audience reach or media impression data for the campaign is publicly available beyond the figures attributed to promiseo.sk and prokop.online. Structurally, however, the campaign's effectiveness is consistent with its strategic architecture: the documentary-social experiment format generates higher credibility and shareability than conventional cause advertising, while the AR filter element created a participatory layer that extended organic reach at low incremental cost. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that achieves genuine creative and commercial impact within the constraints of a nonprofit budget in the Slovak market, while leaving room for broader media amplification.
Biela Pastelka, meaning White Crayon, is the Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union's annual fundraising collection. The 2021 campaign, created by Promiseo, used the childhood game of blind-man's buff to help sighted Slovak audiences experience visual impairment through sound and touch, generating record gross proceeds of €234,415.81, according to unss.sk.
Promiseo, a Košice-based advertising agency in Slovakia, created the campaign. Creative direction was led by Andrea Liszkai, with copywriting by Mária Duffeková, as documented by strategie.hnonline.sk. Promiseo also served as the production company, maintaining end-to-end control over the campaign's integrated asset suite including video, social posts, and Instagram AR filters.
The 2021 campaign achieved record revenue for the Biela Pastelka collection. According to unss.sk and bielapastelka.sk, gross proceeds reached €234,415.81 and net proceeds reached €203,037.04. Promiseo also reported a 23 percent year-on-year increase in campaign-related searches, as cited by prokop.online, indicating strong organic audience growth alongside the fundraising result.
Promiseo selected blind-man's buff — slepá baba in Slovak — because it gave sighted donors an immediately accessible personal analogy for sensory navigation without sight. According to strategie.hnonline.sk, the social experiment format reversed the conventional charity appeal model, placing experiential understanding before the donation ask, which proved more effective during the competitive COVID-era fundraising environment in Slovakia.
The campaign ran across integrated formats in Slovakia. As documented by promiseo.sk, these included a core documentary video, key visuals, social posts, GIFs, and Instagram augmented reality filters. The AR filter extended the campaign's empathy mechanism into a self-directed digital experience, allowing Slovak social media users to simulate aspects of visual impairment through their own device cameras.
The Biela Pastelka 2021 campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. This reflects genuine creative and commercial impact within a nonprofit Slovak market context, acknowledging the campaign's record-breaking fundraising results and documentary craft, while noting that broader media amplification and third-party verified reach data are not publicly available for this campaign.
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