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Here's a fantastic use of in-store media by Ikea to bring the reality of the Syrian crisis home to those enveloped in the comforts of the West—indeed, those right in the middle of shopping for those very comforts. Everyone is familiar with the showrooms in your typical Ikea. But one room in Ikea Slependen, the retailer's flagship store in Norway, was quite unexpected. It's a replica of a real Syrian home—25 square meters of cinder block walls and meager furnishings.
Ikea posters and price tags in the space tell the story of a typical Syrian family's plight, including the lack of food, medicine and clean water. The price tags also serve as donation slips, as the stunt is a fundraising effort with the Red Cross, created by ad agency POL. The home is a replica of an actual residence in Damascus, as the video below explains....
Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are increasingly using social media to spread campaigns. Little research has focused on the influence of user comments on trust in NPOs regarding campaigns in social media. Stakeholders’ trust is seen as important for NPOs. Two experimental studies examine the influence of user comments with different connotations concerning campaigns that were published on the social networking site Facebook. The first experiment focused on the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The second experiment applied to a fictitious NPO, to avoid reputation influence. Irrespective of the NPO’s reputation, the results show that user comments in social media influence the perceived trustworthiness of NPOs. Trustworthiness is fundamental to acts of trust such as those taking the form of a donation....
Products of caring companies are seen as superior
New research just released shows that corporate social goodwill can elevate a company’s profits by improving consumers’ perceptions of its products, but only when it’s seen as genuine.[Chernev, Alexander and Sean Blair (2015), “Doing Well by Doing Good: The Benevolent Halo of Social Goodwill” Journal of Consumer Research Summary]
New research shows that social goodwill increases the perceived quality of your products
Your products will only be perceived as better when your Social Responsibility Policies are motivated by an authentic values-led strategy, rather than thinly-veiled self-interest and hopeful publicity...
CMI's Nonprofit Content Marketing 2015 research is out. Nonprofit marketers are doing more with content marketing – and feeling more confident about their effectiveness. They’re trying more tactics, using more social media platforms, growing in their internal knowledge and skills, and focusing on becoming better storytellers. Here’s a quick list of our favorite insights from this year’s report, including what a best-in-class nonprofit marketer looks like.
Are you planning a social media campaign?
Do you wonder why some marketing campaigns are more successful than others?
The recent ALS Ice Bucket Challenge went viral because they used powerful psychological concepts to influence participation.
In this article I’ll share the concepts ALS used to achieve overwhelming success and how you can use them....
“Where does a phenomenon begin?” That’s the question ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi seeks to answer in a long SportsCenter feature on the ice bucket challenge, which has reportedly raised more than $50 million for ALS charities in less than a month.
...This origin myth, while heartwarming, just isn’t true. The real story of how the ice bucket challenge came to dominate your Facebook feed takes nothing away from Frates’ inspirational message, or the fact that his personal struggle helped draw celebrities to the cause and drive charitable contributions. But focusing on “one name” obscures another fascinating tale, one that illustrates how movements mutate and evolve as they travel across the Web....
Over the last few years, social media has had a huge impact in our everyday lives. It has completely changed the way we engage the world, both locally and internationally.
However, much of what is showcased focuses on the negative aspects of social media, such as people using it as a place to vent or rant or as place for cyberbullying. Despite our nature to focus on the more negative moments in social media, there are still many people using social media outlets to do great things in our world
From the nonprofit, for-profit, and even ordinary individuals, here are four examples of how social media is being utilized for social good....
At GreenUP, it’s no different. The task of creating our annual report begins in early February, to be completed in time for our late March Annual General Meeting. The report traditionally was a four page, text-heavy document that involved facts and figures, lists of community partners and compelling photos. This year, however, we decided to do things differently.
Over the past year, the organization went through a rebranding and strategic planning process, the result of which was an increased focus on donor communications. Our previous annual reports consisted of a lot of facts and figures that showed accomplishments, but in a format that wasn’t donor friendly. We realized this had to change for the 2013 report, and wanted a document that not only clearly communicated our accomplishments, but also wouldn’t put the reader to sleep. Enter, the infographic....
Marketers use stories to draw the attention of a wider audience and to generate interest in your organization. In fundraising, including major gift fundraising, stories motivate donors to provide financial support.
Here are three tips for using stories to boost your organization's bottom line through major gifts...
charity: water, a nonprofit that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations, is leading the way when it comes to redefining nonprofit marketing; they are exceptional at inbound marketing, focusing on creating powerful content to inspire people to join their cause. Their marketing has tangible results: in 2012 alone they raised $33 million, and over $8 million of that was raised through their online fundraising platformplatform.
While it might not be possible for other nonprofits to perfectly emulate charity: water´s marketing strategy––in fact, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for them to try given that each nonprofit has a distinct mission, target audience and way of operating––all would benefit from applying even just a few of the lessons we can learn from their incredible marketing. With that in mind, here are nine marketing lessons other nonprofits can take away from charity: water...
How to Improve Lives & Improve the Bottom Line through Content Marketing is about how to create momentous content initiatives at the intersection of Corporate Social Responsibility, Cause Marketing and Content Marketing...
Why are social networks powerful tools for causes and campaigns? Many times, people begin to engage in activism only after they’ve been attracted by the fun stuff in a campaign — connecting with old friends and sharing photos, for example. When they witness others participating, they’ll be more likely to join the cause. With socializing as the primary draw, it’s become easier for organizers to attract more and more unlikely activists through social media.
But once a campaign reaches its critical mass, activists might think about moving to other platforms made with their needs — especially digital security — in mind. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter will remain standard fare for online activism. But the time is right for niche-oriented startups to create tools that can supplement these platforms. Here are a few worth investigating....
As my good friend, Michael Brito, SVP Edelman, stated in an interaction yesterday, So many people are open to like, share and comment for social issues... UNICEF is currently running a brilliant Facebook campaign that focuses on the inaction that is often observed in the social media campaigns. It delightfully pokes at the online media phenomenon, “Slacktivism”. Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism or slackervism) is a portmanteau of the words slacker and activism. The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel some amount of satisfaction. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. The underlying assumption being promoted by the term is that these low cost efforts substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them. (Source: Wikipedia) Malcom Gladwell, in his Oct 2010 New Yorker article, argued that it is not right to compare social media “revolutions” with actual activism that challenges the status quo ante. He argued that today’s social media campaigns can’t compare with activism that takes place on the ground....
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Online search is increasingly the vehicle through which many people find out, inform themselves and learn about most things they are interested in. Although its commercial interests, profit-driven business model, secretive approach, and some of its technology limitations would really not suggest to leave that much power to Google, many of our information decisions are influenced, if not altogether driven by what this search engine suggests back to anyone of our queries. As a consequence search plays a very critical role in our present society, and it would only seem wise for all that we do not readily accept the idea of relying on an auto-generated list of popular web sites ranked by a set of secret algorithms. But, the reality is that without really being much aware of it, we have slowly but vastly delegated to Google the task of deciding for us what is most relevant and what is not, over just about any topic we can think of....
Every industry and niche—every social profile, even—is unique.
Non-profits are a great example of a segment of social media with its own unique elements and expectations. The non-profit structure—donation-backed, humanitarian-focused, member-based—presents an opportunity for some really neat ways of putting social media to good use, and I’ve done my best to collect a number of stats, tips, and strategies here in this post.
Do you run a non-profit? Do you help your non-profit share to social media? I’d love to learn from your experience also.
These are all good reasons. Heck, I choose not to do things every day because of time or because they’re not part of my business goals. I get it.
But what these nonprofit professionals may not realize is the tremendous boom blogging can be for their careers. If they only knew how blogging could improve and impact their careers! If they did they would find the time, explore the possibilities and make blogging a priority.
Today, I have my work cutout for me!
Here are five ways blogging can grow your nonprofit career - and might just lead to another exciting career!...
Getting major media placements in outlets such as "NBC Nightly News" and The Huffington Post is every PR and media relations professional's dream—and if you can get 1 million or so people to visit your brand's website in response to the coverage, that's icing on the cake.
This year, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center pulled off this feat using a brand journalism approach. Here's how it attracted so much public attention to the news so quickly....
Eventually, every celebrity and politician (though hopefully not every brand) will have taken the Ice Bucket Challenge.
So, what next? The moment the ALS campaign went crazy, we braced for the inevitable slew of copycats.
Adweek takes a look at some of the contenders....
Purpose-driven content marketing is a way for a business or brand to bond with a target audience based on their shared needs and interests — including interest in supporting a worthy cause. But while most organizations recognize the importance of “giving back,” they aren’t always accustomed to creating content around their efforts in a way that will both engage their audience and drive them to participate. Success in this arena is all about developing the right strategy and executing it in an authentic, organic way that brings mutual benefit to everyone involved.
“The public broadcasters do a great job: NPR, BBC, etc. As journalism-driven enterprises, they’re natural content producers, unfettered by concerns around selling advertising,” says Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at Altimeter Group. “PETA has done some high profile and groundbreaking campaigns. I love American Express’ efforts around Small Business Saturday.”
To get some additional perspectives on the topic — and some best-of-breed examples — CMI asked a group of blog contributors, Online Training instructors, and Content Marketing Worldspeakers for their answers to the question, “What companies do you know of that are doing purpose-driven marketing well?” Following are some of their answers....
Are you ready to start a fundraising website for your non-profit clients?
We have collected some of the finest WordPress themes for charity and non-profit organizations that have been designed by a team of professionals with many years of experience in this field. This is the perfect time to launch a fundraising website with the year coming to an end.
These themes are designed to help non-profit organizations generate surplus revenue with easy-to-use customization features....
In Content Marketing for Nonprofits, Kivi Leroux Miller mentions a language study by Jen Shang, a psychologist who studies philanthropic behavior uncovered nine agitators Americans use to define a good person: - Kind
- Caring
- Compassionate
- Helpful
- Friendly
- Fair
- Hard-working
- Generous
- Honest
Branding is also vital when your organization is launching specific fundraising campaigns, events, projects, or programs. An excellent example of a nonprofit with a well-known brand that helped one of its major campaigns is GiveCorps, which recently had a Giving Tuesday campaign called BmoreGivesMore.
The consistency of the branding for GiveCorps proved to substantially aid its messaging and helped form strategic partnerships with like brands. The end result of these efforts? Well, the organization raised $5.7M in one day (yep, one day).
Let's break down the organization to see exactly who they are and what has made them such a success -- including its branding techniques....
UBC studies suggest all those ribbon campaigns might not be that effective in raising cash...
A study conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia came to some sobering conclusions.In a series of experiments conducted in the field and the lab, researchers asked participants to show their support for various causes. In one study, one group was given a poppy to commemorate Remembrance Day and asked to put it on immediately. Another group was given a poppy in a sealed envelope to take away with them. A third group, given neither a poppy nor an envelope, acted as a control. Individuals in all three groups were then asked to make a donation to support Canada’s war veterans. (The money raised was, in fact, donated.)
Individuals who had accepted the poppy in a sealed envelope donated significantly more than those in the other two groups....
...World Pulse's recent Girls Transform the World campaign invited girls and women to identify, share and reflect on barriers to girls' education and to propose solutions. World Pulse received hundreds of responses from some 60 countries, including from repressive societies where girls’ stories often go untold.
The community shared stories about the effects of education policies, child marriage and pregnancy, security and school facilities. In addition to creating an active discussion inside the community, World Pulse aggregated and organized 350 stories and gave them to delegates of the G(irls)20 Summit, who then delivered the communiqué to the G20 summit.IJNet recently spoke with World Pulse Digital Action Campaign Manager Leana Mayzlina and Content Coordinator Kim Crane, and came away with these tips for engaging a community...
An exciting announcement came out of HubSpot last week that's got the inbound world buzzing. As you can see in the promotional video below, HubSpot is partnering with charity: water, "a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.” HubSpot is helping charity: water use the principles of inbound marketing to further spread the non-profit’s mission. Pretty cool, right? This is one thing I don’t hear discussed a lot in the marketing world - effective and strategic marketing tactics for non-profits. This new partnership got me thinking about it, and after looking through HubSpot’s fundamental inbound marketing principles, it became apparent how this practice philosophically and logically complements non-profit work.Here are three reasons why non-profits should take a nod from charity: water and look to inbound marketing tactics to spread their mission and accomplish their work....
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Brilliant and heartwarming corporate PR and marketing by IKEA in Norway. I hope the Red Cross benefits hugely from this effort so that Syrian refugees can be helped. It's a great reminder that we can all do more!