Free Advertising Worth Less Than Nothing?

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we discussed a new article by Jeff Brooks and the possible pitfalls of working with ad agencies.

What's your favorite or least favorite example of nonprofit advertising? What's your organization's advertising success (or failure) story?

Cheers,
Elliot

I learned a lot just from seeing the kinds of video and photo stories that were most successful in the Digital Storytelling Challenge. The winners weren't just veteran digital storytellers; there were many smaller orgs. often making their first attempt at creating a digital story. A lot of what made the winners successful was creativity, very clear presentation of who they are and what they do (not too abstract), and a personal touch so it wasn't like you were just watching a generic corporate-looking video or photo story.

Another great successful example that comes to mind is #blamedrewscancer which is a campaign on Twitter started by a guy name Drew. Using this hashtag, people tweet blaming Drew's cancer for everything from the traffic jam to the computer crashing. It took off and is now a partnered with the  LiveStrong foundation so $ is donated every time someone uses the #blamedrewscancer hashtag. I like their homepage where you can see the real-time tweets of blame coming in.

Best,

Megan

Thanks, Megan.

Do you think that there's a sort of desperation to be the first to think of one of these events? I remember the blamedrewscancer campaign, and I also remember a few orgs trying to do silimar Twitter blitzes with much less success. Similarly, I've seen a few attempts to do something like Tweetsgiving, with very little response.

It seems like novelty is a big part of what makes this sort of fundraiser work. All of this kind of contributes to my cynicism about social media's ROI as a fundraising tool.

Cheers,
Elliot

Hi Elliot--

I definitely think novelty is what has helped make many of these campaigns successful. There's definitely this push to be "first" to try to do something and/or jump on the bandwagon of successful campaign, often less successful when the novelty factor wears off. I don't think this says social media isn't ffective long-term fundraising tool, but rather whatever marketing/campaign approach you take should still be very mission-driven. You can have a creative campaign, but if it's not tied in with your mission, it risks seeming like a one-off push for donations vs getting folks passionate and invested in your cause in the long term. Also a social media campaign can't just be a stand-alone thing; it needs to be part of an overall ongoing process of building up and connecting with a network of supporters.

My 2 cents,

Megan