It feels like every other day a campaign is launched that attempts to mush a brand, a ‘cause’ and a social media platform into a tasty morsel of PR-able goodness. For the sake of this post, let’s refer to these campaigns as ‘brancauseaforms’. Yes, brancauseaforms always start out with the best intentions, but in their short lifetime we’ve already seen executions that range from five star to flaccid.
As it seems, any self respecting brancauseaform needs to have three things in place:
1. A brand with some cash (and an inclination for good);
2. An organisation that needs said cash, and;
3. Some things that consumers can do to help move money from one account to the other.
Invariably, whatever the maximum amount of money the brand had decided to allocate ends up with the recipient, regardless of how many people actually do whatever it is that they’ve been asked to do (sign up, refer a friend, buy a specially marked pack). Of course, this is a great result for the cause, but it also means that the brancauseaform mechanism is really just for show. And of course, for building the brand.
See, if the cause getting the goods is a forgone conclusion, then the measure of success for campaigns like these needs to be around talkability, press coverage, and positive brand building.
So how do you develop a brancauseaform mechanism that pops?
Look no further than Kraft (USA’s) recently launched ‘Huddle for Hunger’ campaign (http://www.kraftrecipes.com/huddleforhunger/home.aspx). In an effort to highlight the one in six Americans (and almost one in four children) who struggle with hunger, the global food giant has set out to donate 20 million meals to needy recipients. The campaign cuts across all the major social media properties (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) but is still simple enough to explain in one sentence.
“Tweet about Kraft, ‘like’ Kraft on Facebook or watch a YouTube video from Kraft’s channel and they’ll give a meal to someone affected by hunger”
Bang. Simple. Just like that. I know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and how I can get involved. Easy for me to talk about it. Easy for journalists to write about it. Easy for consumers to be a part of it.
The cause is also a perfect fit for the brand.
Contrast this with the recent ‘Fresh Start Project’ campaign from Realestate.com.au, that set out to build a new home for a migrant family seeking a fresh start in Australian. Like Kraft, the brand picked a great cause and set aside a generous chunk of cash, but that’s where the similarities end.
To build the house, realestate.com.au needed people to donate one million (virtual) ‘bricks’ to the cause. To donate ‘bricks’, participants had to accumulate them by browsing around the realestate.com.au website. They’d then click through to a separate, purpose built microsite and login in with their Facebook details using ‘Facebook Connect’. This somehow transferred their ‘bricks’ to the cause and posted their actions to their Facebook wall. The microsite also created a virtual gallery of donors which could be browsed and ranked based on how many bricks each person had donated.
I’m not sure if the target of one million is how many bricks you actually need to build a house or if they just picked an arbitrary number for the campaign (and what about all the non brick stuff like carpets, furniture and appliances?).
From a technology perspective, the Fresh Start Project’s got some really cool stuff in it. The microsite looks impressive, integrates with Facebook and uses some fancy flash effects for navigation. Strip these superficial (but impressive to digital industry people) elements out and you’re left with a campaign that’s not only confusing to participate in but also borderline impossible to explain to others. Too many steps, too many sites and an abstract target that people are meant to be shooting for.
So what does it all mean?
It means you can boost the chances of your next brancauseaform campaign becoming a runaway success by adhering to a few simple rules:
1. Keep it simple. If you can’t explain the campaign in a single sentence it needs to be revised.
2. Keep it relevant. Both brands picked causes that fit with their core offerings. This helps boost the talkability for staff, consumers and importantly, the media.
3. Keep your agency in check. Make sure that the mechanism and choice of technology being recommended are a good fit for the campaign and target market - not just your agency’s show reel.
