# UNICEF & Dulux Own A Colour site raises £75,000 in under two weeks

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/10/13/unicef-amp-dulux-own-colour-site-raises-75000-under-two-weeks/
- Published: 2011-10-13T23:07:02+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Own A Colour, the campaign by Dulux to ‘sell’ the 16.77 million colours on a computer
screen to raise money for UNICEF raised £51,000 on its first day when it was launched
on 29 September. Two weeks later the total has exceeded £75,000.**

For a minimum donation of £1, any colour can be bought via **ownacolour.com**, with
every pound raised donated to UNICEF.

The striking visual campaign builds on the success of initiatives like [I CAN’s Adopt A Word](http://www.adoptaword.com)
campaign, and the pixel-based [Milliondollarhomepage.com](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com)
of Alex Tew and [Tate Britain’s buy-a-pixel campaign to save Turner’s The Blue Rigi](https://fundraising.co.uk/or Turner painting hits target early)
for the nation in 2007.

## Advertisement

Own A Colour was launched by senior marketers of AkzoNobel Decorative Paints, the
world’s biggest paint company and owners of the Dulux brand, at their Annual Global
Marketing Conference in Rome. Social media promotion on the day resulted in the #
ownacolour hashtag becoming the most popular phrase on Twitter in the UK.

After the initial success in the UK, the Own A Colour team plan to drive further
take-up around the world. So far, people from 50 countries have donated.

The campaign will run for up to a year but of course organisers hope to sell the
colours before then. There are 16,777,216 different colours that can be displayed
on a 24 bit display computer screen, which covers most PCs and the more recent mobile
phone displays.

The colour ‘**blackberry**‘ was bought recently by a fundraiser from another charity,
who used it as a humorous comment on the current travails of Blackberry mobile phone
users who had suffered days of downtime:

> Dear Blackberry owners: BREAKING NEWS: OFFICIAL: [#Blackberry](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Blackberry?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> bought tonight in incredible £3 deal. Full details at [http://t.co/NijyscR5](http://t.co/NijyscR5)
> — Michael Newsome (@NewsomeTwin2) [October 12, 2011](https://twitter.com/NewsomeTwin2/status/124209178561626113?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

### UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador Sir Roger Moore explains Own A Colour

## Comments

### By: HowardLake

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/10/13/unicef-amp-dulux-own-colour-site-raises-75000-under-two-weeks/#comment-4457
- Published: 2023-03-29T04:12:31+01:00

This campaign has sparked an idea for another:

[https://twitter.com/JTCHANGINGBIZ/status/1640986043599015937](https://twitter.com/JTCHANGINGBIZ/status/1640986043599015937)