Thank You For Stealing

July 1, 2008

 

The maxim very successful fundraisers live by was set forth by George Bernard Shaw 80 years ago: "The mediocre borrow, genius steals."

In short, when you see a winning concept, campaign, technique, whatever, just steal it. Adapt it. Run with it.
Which brings me to today’s plea: All of us need to be sending more samples of good and great campaign or one-off efforts to SOFII the marvelous fundraising attic (aka: swipe file) where you can find all kinds of useful, informative and stealable stuff.
SOFFI just posted its June additions yesterday. For example:
§ActionAid’s controversial Bollocks to Poverty campaign.
§ Inspirational direct mail from a seven-year-old schoolgirl.
§ How Giving Scotland turned a crisis into a triumph.
§ A simple but brilliant idea for involving business people in the fight against heart disease.
§ Croatia’s campaign for mobility and independence for blind people.
§ A small organisation’s low-cost solution to recognising donors.
§ Hannah’s make and bake cake and biscuit sale.
§ The launch of a high level monthly giving product designed to upgrade donors in their thousands.
§ How a beautiful flower, the Edelweiss, became an involvement device and a symbol of hope for a hospice in Romania.
§ Make–A-Wish and upgrade your donors.

§ Twenty years before Barack Obama, the tale of an African American’s bid for the White House. Common Cause takes on the excesses of the American legislature. [Hey, this is copy I wrote 20+ years ago, long before "mid-level donor programs" were even a glimmer in whatever consultants’ eyes and it’s still good, he says, in all modesty :) ]

Seriously, so much great thinking, great creative and great innovation occurs every day in our trade, but we need to be far more energetic in sharing it with the rest of our world.

So please, vow to take 15 minutes, find one or two samples and get it up on SOFII’s site.

Thank you for stealing.

Roger

Posted by rcraver | Filed Under Uncategorized, advocacy, cause marketing, charities, communications, copywriting, creativity, direct mail, direct marketing, drtv, email marketing, fun | Leave a Comment 

If You’re Going To Use TV Spots …

October 15, 2007

If you're going to the expense of producing and placing TV spots, make sure they hit your audience right between the eyes … as in these spots from Save Darfur, and this one from Families USA.

TV is first and foremost a vehicle for tapping emotions.

Fail to do that, and your message or facts will never register.

Tom

P.S. Thanks to The Rowan Report for the Darfur tip.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Pushing the Creative Envelope, communications, drtv | Leave a Comment 

TV Or Internet Video?

September 30, 2006

How you like your “moving pictures” served up is mostly a matter of generation.

For example, according to Forrester Research, GenXers (age 13-26) spend 12.2 hours a week on the internet and 10.6 hours watching TV. At the other end of the spectrum, Seniors (age 62+) spend 3.8 hours a week on the internet and 14.4 hours watching TV.

To be sure, everybody watches a lot of television. But that said, the latest data from comScore Media Metrix says that 3 of every 5 internet users are watching online videos, typically twice a day. In all 7.2 billion videos were streamed across the internet this past July. The top three online video sources (a bit of a surprise here) were MySpace, then Yahoo, then YouTube.

I'm an old-timer who spent many unrewarded hours trying to convince nonprofits to try direct reponse TV ads back in the days when cable TV was the next hot medium. The only fundraisers who ever really mastered the medium were (and still are) the child relief agencies like Worldvision, Save the Children and Christian Children's Fund. For most nonprofits, even today, getting some PSA time counts as a big score.

So it is with some trepidation that I pass along this DRTV Guide, courtesy of DMNews. As The Essential Guide to Direct Response Television illustrates, folks are selling stuff quite successfully on TV, thank you. I suspect they're doing even better these days because they can “close” the deal online (rather than just with 800 numbers).

The advice in the Guide comes from successful DRTV pros. And guess what? If you're a GenX or GenY fundraiser who thinks online video is the next big thing (and my old gut thinks you're right), there are even lessons in the Guide for you. Because some laws of direct marketing are timeless, because the underlying human nature is immutable.

Posted by admin | Filed Under General Post, drtv, online fundraising | Leave a Comment 

Wouldn’t We All Like to Score Like Ed?

July 25, 2006

According to Business Week, Ed Robinson spent $10,000 to create a humorous 12-second “viral video” and e-mailed it to five of his friends with his website address. Three months later his site had received 500,000 visits.

Wouldn't we all like to score with a creative hit like that?!

As the article describes, big dollars are beginning to flow into online video ads on sites like YouTube, Google Video and about one hundred other sites that share videos. But the field is already getting cluttered, with major brands spending $200,000 on a video competing with Valley girls and their videophones. YouTube alone, the 800-pound gorilla, serves up millions of videos daily; according to MediaPost its traffic has quadrupled in the first half of 2006.

For non-profits, there's still a relatively low “cost of entry” for experimenting with online video, both in the context of viral videos (where you're hoping simply to ignite a free ride from your audience) and paid placement (where the calculus is similar to traditional direct response TV). Again I'll say, when you find an opportunity that combines the impact of video, plus the ability to target precisely (at least with paid placements), plus the immediate “one-click” direct response capability of the online channel, it's worth checking out!

Posted by admin | Filed Under Pushing the Creative Envelope, drtv, new media, online fundraising, online video | Leave a Comment