How we got 2000+ people to light Sri Lanka's first crowdsourced Wesak Pandol using the Zeigarnik effect.
Every passive participant became part of one billion pledges.
- Portfolio
- Principal
- Client
- AIA Insurance
- Sector
- Life insurance
- Scale
- Two nights at the Buddha Rashmi Vesak Kalapaya, Colombo 07
- Where
- Sri Lanka
- Engagement
- Brand activation
- Over
- Two nights, 23 and 24 May · 2024
- With
- HelpAge Sri Lanka
Quick context.
Offering of light to the Buddha on sacred days like Wesak and Poson. Large platforms are built and on them, stories of the Buddha's many lives are told to the masses on illuminated panels.
To become part of the AIA One Billion pledges movement: people who promised to take better care of their health.
The Wesak Street in Colombo is made for walking. People who tremble at the thought of walking 2km, walk it effortlessly, multiple times without thinking about it.
A pandol marked by the absence of light (save for a few pixels).
To light another pixel of the pandol, people had to take the pledge to walk a minimum of the time duration they walked on that day, for at least 4 days a week. The moment they hit ‘submit’, they saw the pixel light up.
- 01Sees a dark pandol, in a street where the status quo is lit pandols.
- 02Sees a few pixels lit up, and feels the urge to complete it.
- 03Meets a challenge: to light it up, you must take the pledge.
- 04Realises the challenge is easy, because they remember the walk being easy.
- 05Makes the pledge.
- 06Gets instant dopamine: the pixel lights, and a donation is made on their behalf.
Bluma Zeigarnik found in 1927 that people remember interrupted tasks better than finished ones. The working version is what an unfinished thing does to you while you are standing in front of it: it sits there unresolved, and the pull to complete it is stronger than the pull to admire something already complete. A fully lit pandol is a spectacle. A pandol visibly short of being lit is an unfinished job, in front of a crowd who can each finish a piece of it.
What the work did.
- The thorana lit fully. Twice.
It was designed not to. AIA reports that the overwhelming participation resulted in the entire thorana lighting up fully on both nights, which is the only result the mechanic could produce and the only one that would have meant anything.
- Over 2,000 people pledged
Each one committing to walk again for as long as they had walked that evening, on at least four days a week. Not a view, a like or a scan: a commitment made in public, in front of the crowd it lit the display for.
- Ten people had cataract surgery
The donation those pledges generated went to HelpAge Sri Lanka and sponsored ten cataract surgeries for patients who could not otherwise have had them. A pledge to walk, converted into someone else's eyesight.
Number of pledges recorded in person across the two days.