Fabio Seidl is vice president & executive creative director of Lapiz/Leo Burnett Chicago. That deserves congratulations but it’s not why he is being applauded here.

Seidl is ex-creative director of Ogilvy Brazil. One of the last projects he did there, in November last year, just went global. It should be recognised 1. because it’s very clever 2. because it is already very effective and 3. because it’s for one of the world’s most important children’s cancer treatment centers in the world, GRAACC in Sao Paulo.

In Brazil, November 23 is National Childhood Cancer Day. So Ogilvy & Mather Brazil invited local cartoons to shave their own heads to support the kids and spread a simple message, ‘a kid with cancer should enjoy their childhood like any other kid’. The aim was just to stop one of the most difficult side effects of childhood cancer to treat – prejudice.

The campaign was an instant success. Jornal Nacional (National News on Rede Globo), the main newscast in Brazil, gave the campaign detailed coverage. Media coverage the picked it up and in Brazil alone, the campaign reached 120 million people, including 91% of social media users. Many even changed their avatars to reference the movement. The campaign also ignited celebrities such as Neymar Jr (soccer player), Ronaldo (businessman and former soccer player) and Anderson Silva (MMA world champion), When it reached President Dilma Rousseff, he used Twitter to spread the news about the movement, in three posts.

So with April being the International Month of Fighting Cancer, Ogilvy has widened its supporters 40 international cartoon characters will now shave their heads and appear bald for the campaign – Popeye and Olive Oyl, Snoopy, Hello Kitty, Equestria Girls, The Phanton, Mister Potato Head, Garfield, Finn, and the characters from Rio 2 among them.

Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, NatGeo, Fox Kids and Netflix are airing full featured cartoons in Brazil with bald characters, and some newspapers are running exclusive comic strips.