Oxfam’s YouTube vid is a powerful fundraiser
The Oxfam New Zealand Christmas Video did the rounds in 2006 and is available on YouTube. It’s about a minute and a half long, and is a humorous encouragement by cartoon farm animals: Don’t buy crap this Christmas, buy me
.
This refers to Oxfam’s Unwrapped campaign that encouraged people to combine giving:
…something special to your friends or family and … something extra special to people who haven’t got much at all.
Gifts include items such as mosquito nets, ducks, coffee plants, donkeys and other items that help improve the lives of people in poverty. Your direct recipient received a certificate and an overseas aid programme received funding.
Oxfam’s campaign has now won the Not-For-Profit Marketing Award, at the TVNZ/NZ Marketing Magazine Marketing Awards.
… rather than use the well-trodden and worthy “do something for someone less fortunate” angle that many charities adopt, Oxfam decided to have some fun and focus on the rubbish most people give each other at Christmas time. That led to the release of an online song called Don’t Buy Crap This Christmas.
… After watching the video, viewers could click through to the Unwrapped website to purchase any of the ‘Oxfarm’ band members (the animals) or other quirky, but life-saving gifts.
The budget was tiny, but the only media cost was the initial seed email ($1188 in send costs). … It worked! Fewer people bought “crap” than ever before. Instead they went online in their thousands and bought goats, chickens and donkeys for Africa (and other places).
Read the full article at the AllBusiness.com website. Warning: the site is atrocious, with pop-up rubbish and flashing, distracting garbage, and weird frames.
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August 27, 2008 No Comments
Mousing close to the edge
Can not-for-profit organisations make the best use of ‘viral marketing’? To make a viral marketing campaign successful you need to push beyond the average, the accepted, the usual. That’s all very well for radical activist groups, but what about the ‘well-respected’ mainstream organisations?
It turns out that’s a question that researchers at Central Queensland University have been asking:
Not-for-profit organisations seeking to enhance social campaign messages through viral social marketing may find it hard to be edgy enough for success, while conforming to their own values.
That is according to Danya Hodgetts, from Central Queensland University, who has tested viral marketing to send an anti-obesity message.
Viral marketing - otherwise known as ‘word of mouse’ - involves creation of a funny or confronting photo, animation or video clip Email, in the hope that those receiving it will pass it on to dozens of friends.
Ms Hodgetts’ team found it hard to push the envelope far enough to get significant pass-on success, although their video involving a man walking his dog while watching TV was well received by the initial audience and led to click-throughs to a physical activity website.
[Via : Social campaigns struggle to be edgy (ScienceAlert).]
April 12, 2008 No Comments
