Marketing Fundraisers

June seems like its fundraising season with a walk/run/ride each week. Kids with special needs, cancer research, diabetes...they are all good event backed by excellent causes that take the better part of year to plan and execute.

Often this is the one day charities have to gain their media coverage and community support that spreads awareness of their message and gains critical financial support.

But what if it rains that day and the community doesn't come out? What if there is a competing news story and media don't cover the event? Putting all PR eggs into one day's basket is too dangerous.

Find something that gives the community a reason to connect before the event day and media something to cover. This Global TV story and CBC News story are great examples of what the Zareinu Moveathon did to generate awareness of their upcoming events (Full disclosure: We run the marketing for this client).

Most fundraisers rely on a network on volunteers and supporters of the cause. The most successful events turn these important natural ambassadors into fundraisers. This article from NetWitsThinkTank, an online resource for nonprofits, provides great tips on how organizations can best implement this important shift from supporter to fundraiser.

Marketing Through Events

I was at a great fundraiser last week put on by the Credit Valley Hospital Foundation's Young Ambassadors. At this hip event in an art gallery in Mississauga, guests were invited to an all you can eat, drink and dance party.

I could go on about all the wonderful components of this truly great event, but as a marketer the Barefoot Wine table caught my eye. Staffed by two energetic young people I was introduced to a great Pinot Grigio (there were many other wines but this was my choice)that sells in the LCBO for only $10 and a great new marketing concept!

They explained that Barefoot Wine spends its money on making their wine rather than its marketing. Thus the tagline, Great wine without the attitude. Their foremost way of getting the word out about their products is through charity events were people can come and taste their wine.

I tried to find a Canadian website and only found a sparse Facebook group and an U.S. website that is designed as a community with an emphasis on people committed to beach clean up.

I wish them luck with their grassroots marketing initiative and look forward to seeing them at more charity events.

Jesus Christ: A marketing mentor

Being Jewish, I never really gave much thought to Jesus Christ other than in an historical sense. Reading Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission, I am now of the belief that we can add Jesus as one of history's first marketing specialists (or marketing evangelists!).

Warren's book, which talks about how to grow a church through marketing and grassroots programs, is applicable to any organization looking to develop their identity (purpose) and expand within a defined community.

Warren uses examples from the New Testament throughout the book to make many of his points. While Warren alludes to Jesus as a great marketer, it is not the main focus of his book but one which is of great appeal. Here are just a few points to consider on Jesus' techniques:

- Mass marketing to targeted groups: Jesus attracted large crowds by sharing good news (the Gospel) and using it as an attractive power. The original version of a press conference or town hall meeting?

- Message development: His messaging was brought down to the level of the common people making sure he was understood. He did not "dumb down" his message, he respected his audience's intelligence taking time to understand the group and speak to them accordingly.

- Spokesperson training: Jesus was careful to stay on message even in crowds. Staying on point is important in safeguarding the truth.

- Clear & measurable objectives: The New Testament is full of references about Jesus' uncompromising request for 'fruitfulness' and examples of judgement for being 'unfruitful'. Growth equals fruitfulness. Failure to grow through complacency or self-absorption was no excuse and came with consequence.

- Employee engagement: How far will employees go beyond their job description is a very general way to measure employee engagement. Jesus got this. Matthew was just one example of a "good faithful servant". Faithful servants take on risk for the cause and usually are successful as a result. This was recognized and referred to as "faithful" versus "lazy" as passive, fearful, non-fruit baring servants were called.


These are just a few examples but they give food for thought and perhaps a good idea for a research paper for a marketing student looking for a juicy topic.....

Statistics Businesses Should Consider Before they Plan their PR Strategy

Thank you Adam Singer from The Future Buzz for this information. Note: the original post, Architecting a Social Web Marketing and PR Strategy, includes much more information, helpful case studies as well all the sources for the statistics below.


The social areas of the web are growing fast. Consider just a few stats:

- 400 million active Facebook users
- 50 million Tweets per day
- 133 million blogs (creating 900,000 blog posts every 24 hours)
- around 77% of Internet users read blogs

While the above numbers show the scale of the consumer driven web – B2B influence also lives here. According to a Forrester Research report of business buyers:

- 91% read blogs, watch user generated video, participate in other social media
- 55% of decision-makers are in social networks
- 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.)

Consumers and prospects are already here. Marketing dollars care catching up, fast:
- $55 billion - number of dollars marketers will spend on interactive (display, mobile, email, social, search) channels by 2014 - representing a compound annual growth rate of 34%.

Media influence, too:

- 89% of reporters use blogs,
- 65% use social networking sites,
- 52% use microblogging sites according to a national study by GW University.

Nestle suffers Facebook backlash

The following is an excerpt from March 19, 2010 story by Emily Bryson York and Kunur Patel for Advertising Age with files from Marketing.

Nestlé is enduring a hard lesson in social media marketing this week thanks to Greenpeace.

The company has been embroiled in a debate over its use of palm oil, among other things. The issue arose again this week when Greenpeace produced a graphic commercial spoof that went viral. Greenpeace claims Nestlé is sourcing palm oil from an Indonesian company guilty of deforestation practices that are endangering orangutan. The video showed a man opening a Kit Kat wrapper but instead of biting into the chocolate bar he sinks his teeth into the finger of an orangutan that bleeds down the man's chin.

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Building Hype Before a Big Annoucement

It's working. Adam Giambrone's I'm Ready video alerting the public to his upcoming announcement to run for Mayor has gone viral. Comments are positive and negative but what's most important is that everyone's talking- Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the media....

Well Done Acura 2000!

We were in the boardroom having an internal staff meeting when a courier arrives with an enormous fruit and flower basket. It was for Kim Cohen, our CEO. Kim had recently bought a new car and this was her dealership saying thank you. Wouldn't you tell a friend about this?

The Big Money Facebook

The Big Money Facebook 50, a ranking of the brands that are currently making the best use of Facebook. If you are in retail or food services this slideshow is a must-see.

(Thanks Melinda Van Patter - justmelinda - for posting this on Twitter)

Client Relations vs. Social Media

My colleague, Kendra Dubyk, and I were working on a client's PR plan for the upcoming year. We laid out several strategies including a heavy focus on media relations, some in-store promotion and a creative way to connect with the local community. The external campaign was then supported by some internal communication ideas to simultaneously keep our best marketing foot soldiers, the employees, engaged and pumped about the business.

A social media strategy, however, was glaringly missing. I, the person who promotes social media strategies so often in this very blog, was chicken! Our client is quite risk adverse. As with most businesses, much of their success is dependent on positive customer opinion, word of mouth and brand image.

How would the client react to potential negative online chatter about their products? How would we then justify having suggested this strategic direction? My desire for ongoing positive client relations was taking over my campaign suggestions. Then, Kendra put it all in context.

"Whether or not we develop a social media campaign has nothing to do with whether people are, or are not, going to talk about them online. People who have negative comments are already posting them. Not having a campaign of our own in this space only means we are choosing to ignore it."

The absence of a formal social media campaign would only mean omitting the opportunity to add additional positive messaging and discussion. It made the plan.

Stephen Harper Gives Voters Someone to Love?

Maybe not enough to win back certain voters from his budget cuts to the arts, but definitely enough to make him resonate with a much wider group who needs to see their Prime Minister as warmer and more personable before the next election.

Two thumbs up Prime Minister Harper.

Click here for the full video of Stephen Harper making a surprise appearance at the National Arts Centre gala and singing With a Little Help from My Friends.

A slightly shorter version is here on YouTube:

President Obama on David Letterman

A perfect answer to a touchy question delivered with relaxed body language and humour. Brilliant.

Obama's top 5 PR tricks

A worthwhile read for those of us who help create and follow political campaigns:

Obama's top 5 PR tricks

Donating...your Facebook status

There is a new type of political donation...and this one doesn't cost anything!

I was recently looking at Michael Ignatieff's Facebook profile and noticed this:

....But we can do more—and you can help. You can donate your Facebook status right now.

Just change your status to:

[Your name] supports Michael Ignatieff because the world needs Canada at its best. Become a supporter at http://www.facebook.com/MichaelIgnatieff

We can get this country back on track. Let’s get started

This is a great idea:

1) It costs nothing, making it more likely that people will actually do it;

2) It's free word-of-mouth advertising bringing the Ignatieff campaign directly to more targeted like-minded potential supporters; and

3) It demonstrates a key the message to younger voters: I am like you. I know how to play in your sandbox and can speak your language.

Great concept. Curious if it worked.

Twitter: New Beat for Journalists?

In watching the Michael Jackson coverage yesterday surrounding his memorial, what I found interesting were the journalists at various news stations that were assigned to monitor and report on Twitter. Looks like there is a new journalism beat!

Journalists aspiring to covering this new area, however, need to work a little more on what's news and what isn't. Some reporters did this better than others.

I suppose a random tweet would be the same as a man-on-the-street (streeter) broadcast interview. But somehow, reading "MJ memorial is so...." to me just doesn't cut it as "in-depth perspective' or even "good colour".

I did think it was cool that Elizabeth Taylor tweeted about why she was not going to attend. No need for a press release. One line on twitter and the world new she would not attend to avoid the crowds and the media reported it with the same coverage as had she announced it in a press conference.

Reporters assigned to the 'Twitter beat' may want to know about Twitter trend tracker Twitscoop. Twitscoop created these visualizations of how quickly Jackson memorial-related tweets took over Twitter today:

Twitter 101

I am often asked what Twitter is and finally I have found an easy explanation that anyone can understand.



Now, read this article from Business Week: How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands.

This is clearly not for all my clients but some may want to consider using Twitter to monitor and carefully respond to their customer base. We'll save using this proactively for another blog entry - political campaigns, event promotion.....

Ron Clark Academy Can Teach Marketing Professionals a Good Lesson

Congratulations Ron Clark Academy whose YouTube video, You Can Vote However U Like, spread like wildfire and resulted in interviews on CNN, ABC, and a host of other media outlets. Its students will now also be performing their new song, "Dear Obama," at President Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20.

Marketing guru Seth Godin would be proud – Ron Clarke’s method of teaching and engaging students is a true Purple Cow.

The school runs mostly on donations and all the publicity is working. Oprah Winfrey committed $365,000 just prior to Christmas, a thousand dollars for each day of the year.

The school isn’t shy to ask for donation either. “Donate Now’ click buttons are on many areas of their website, but so are student test scores,
the school’s success training other teachers and their commitment to the community. When asking for dollars from governments, corporations or the general public content marketing with value well communicated is the secret to success.

Perhaps Ron Clark Academy will also start to teach PR – they’re absolutely qualified.

2009 Marketing Budgets

Andre Mazerolle's Redbeard Marketing blog entry 2009 Marketing Budgets: Back in the Crosshairs makes an important point that in today's tough economic times companies should increase, rather than decrease, marketing dollars. His blog entry is based on information from the Canadian Marketing Association.

It's often not what you say but how you say it that matters: thoughts on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's interview with CBC

I was very keen to watch Peter Mansbridge’s interview with Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week. Admittedly, the problem with me watching any interview is that I often end up dissecting the person’s ability to communicate rather than fully paying attention to what is being said. So, here are some of my distracted thoughts and, therefore, humble advice for our Prime Minister.

1) Be careful of what I call the President George Bush smile. This is a slight smile (or smirk) that comes out at inappropriate times (like when talking about the economy). Likely, this is a subconscious nervous habit. The problem is that it risks being mistaken with insincerity.

2) Get personal. Connect with the audience by showing that you are one of them. There was nothing “wrong” with the answer regarding the job loss in the auto sector. It possibly was even a very good answer; but it didn’t give the impression of personally understanding and sharing the pain of people facing unemployment. I don’t know if President-elect Barack Obama understands either, but he sure makes Americans feel as if he does. A simple anecdote can go a long way.

3) Lastly, try to avoid starting answers with “Look,….”. This can very easily be interpreted by the reporter and viewers as an irritated response. In addition to it not sounding very polite (which usually doesn’t win points with voters), showing aggravation can suggest a lack of control over the interview.

As I teach in our media training course, it’s often not what you say, but how you say it, that makes all the difference.

Using Contests to Increase Clicks

Fern Stancer: You are my contest saviour!

Thinking up an idea for a contest to draw traffic to a website is easy. Ensuring it runs smoothly and is strategic from a viral marketing perspective is something else.

This is what Fern taught me:

- Look for every opportunity you can to promote your message within the contest.

- Get used to the word “flow”. Make sure the participant’s experience is easy and makes good strategic sense.

- Look for ways to get additional information about your target market, such as a survey, as part of the entry process.

- Make sure all rules and prizing information is drafted by a dedicated contest lawyer (you wouldn’t go to an eye doctor for your heart would you?).

- Identify ways to increase the viral nature of the contest – what built-in mechanism will there be to ensure participants tell everyone they know about this?

- Leave A LOT of days for testing. Make sure it works. Then try to break the system.

Thanks Fern! Check out www.getcentred.com to see our contest. Fern can answer your contest questions at fern.stancer@chasmarketing.ca.

The New Fireside Chats

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican supporter, as marketers we will all study President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign for years to come. His use of the Internet, social networking sites, Twitter, iPhone applications and text messaging to get the vote out transformed the way elections will need to be run in the future.

In another first, on Saturday Barack Obama made his first official broadcast on YouTube. This signals a major turn in YouTube’s evolution, moving into mainstream marketing strategies. Obama plans to continue weekly video addresses in conjunction to traditional weekly radio messages.

The first broadcast focused heavily on the current global financial crisis and has already been viewed by almost 700,000 people. It was also filmed in traditional YouTube style – no fancy editing. Just a guy talking. Brilliant.