October 26, 2006 | Read Time: 9 minutes
The Direct Marketing Association, in New York, last week announced the winners, including six nonprofit organizations, of its 77th annual International Echo Awards, which honor businesses, charities, and other groups for creative and successful direct-mail and interactive marketing campaigns.
Two of the nonprofit groups, the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation and the Lost Dogs’ Home, in Australia, received silver awards, or second place. World Vision, in Federal Way, Wash.; the Black Repertory Theater, in St. Louis, Mo.; the National Heart Foundation, in Australia; and Red Cross Norway all received bronze, or third-place awards for their marketing efforts. No nonprofit groups received top honors this year.
The Lost Dogs’ Home, an animal-welfare charity in North Melbourne, received a silver award for its campaign to recruit new donors.
The group sent letters, set in Courier font to suggest they were written individually on a typewriter, to older people who own pets and had not previously given to the charity.
The letter requested a one-time gift or a pledge to make monthly or yearly donations and used the message, “Give us your money or the dog/cat gets it.”
The mailing also had a large, easy-to-read survey that included a question about bequests, to determine, without awkward discussions about death, whether the potential donors would be interested in making such a gift. The campaign brought in more than $70,000 in pledges to provide regular support, plus it attracted 2,586 new donors, 53 promised bequests, and the names of more than 700 people who the charity believes are strong candidates to make bequests.
The Vodafone New Zealand Foundation, the charitable arm of the mobile-telecommunications company, also received a silver award for its campaign, Nice People.
The campaign was designed to attract applicants for its World of Difference program, in which the company offers to pay the salaries of people who give up their regular jobs for a year to work at a charity. Salaries are equivalent to individuals’ pay in their regular jobs.
Through the program, the company also pays for Vodafone employees to work at a charity for up to a month.
To attract a diverse range of candidates, Vodafone wanted a campaign that would reach people who weren’t necessarily associated with a charity already.
It created an interactive, playful Web site, with short films and an online quiz that were based on the most extreme examples of nice behavior (for example, a short film was entitled “Nice Psycho”) and promoted the message that anyone could be a nice person. The site attracted 528 applications for the year-long program, and 26 from employees.
Red Cross Norway also won a bronze award for its efforts to revamp its telephone hotline for adolescents by creating a Web service named Cross My Heart that young people could use to pose questions to Red Cross volunteers.
The group wanted to avoid stereotypical teenspeak and instead embraced bold imagery and words. Its Web site featured a picture of a public-toilet wall plastered with Internet addresses that echoed the common concerns and questions of its clientele, using Norwegian phrases that conveyed ideas, like http://www.aminormal.no or http:// www.myfatherhitsme.no.
All those links led to http://www.giveusaname.no, where the Red Cross Norway encouraged youngsters to suggest names for the site and to vote for their favorite. Print advertisements for the contest were designed to look like missing-person posters, and were placed in spots where real missing-person posters were normally found.
Postcards were also sent mirroring the online and print advertisements. The eight-week campaign attracted 50,000 visitors and the Web site has received so many questions from youngsters, it temporarily shut down over Christmas.
SILVER AWARD
The Lost Dogs’ Home
North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Title of program: Friends of PAWs (personally authorized withdrawals) Appeal
Agency: Pareto Fundraising, Woolloomooloo, New South Wales, Australia
Objective: To recruit new donors and identify people who might make bequests.
Budget: No budget, but expected to spend $120,000
Lists: Residents of the Melbourne metropolitan area who had not previously given to the Lost Dogs’ Home but had characteristics in common with previous donors: older, female homeowners who had pets.
Media: To build trust and persuade recipients that they were not “anonymous names on a database,” the Lost Dogs’ Home sent out a plain envelope containing a letter personalized with the donors’ names, cities, and states, written in an informal style. The package also contained a survey, designed to tactfully assess potential donors’ interest in making bequests; a large, simply designed response form, since the recipients were older; and a reply envelope with no stamp required. A photograph of a dog was also included in the mailing.
Results: 2,586 new donors, 53 bequests, more than 700 prospects for bequests, and pledges that will be worth $70,609 a year if fulfilled.
Multimedia: See a slide show of The Lost Dogs’ Home’s marketing campaign
SILVER AWARD
Vodafone New Zealand Foundation
Auckland, New Zealand
Title of program: Nice People
Agency: Draft, Auckland, New Zealand
Objective: To attract applications for the organization’s World of Difference program. The program finds four people willing to give up their jobs to work full time for a charity of their choice for a year, as well as three Vodafone employees willing to leave for a month. Winners are paid by Vodafone while they are working for the nonprofit organization.
Budget: Approximately $65,500, excluding media.
Lists: Any New Zealander older than 18 and Vodafone employees.
Media: Campaign focused on the idea that everyone is capable of being a nice person. Billboards, direct mail, press releases, and other forms of communication directed the audience to a section of the foundation’s Web site, http://www.nicepeople.co.nz. The site featured interactive elements such as an online quiz with scores displayed on a “Nice-o-meter” and humorous films that led visitors to examine their own ways of being nice.
Results: Campaign attracted 528 applications from people who wanted to take a year off, exceeding its target by 76 percent. It received 26 applications from Vodafone employees, or 30 percent more than it hoped for. The Web site attracted 28,363 visits.
Multimedia: See a slide show of Vodafone New Zealand Foundation’s marketing campaign
BRONZE AWARD
World Vision
Federal Way, Wash.
Title of program: AIDS Test
Agency: World Vision designed and ran the campaign itself.
Objective: To raise awareness of the impact of AIDS on children and encourage participation in AIDS-related efforts.
Budget: $14,500
Lists: 603,800 previous and prospective donors and their friends and relatives.
Media: Nine days before World AIDS Day in 2005, World Vision sent out an e-mail message with a link to an AIDS quiz that tested respondents on their knowledge of the disease. After answering 10 questions, participants would click on a button to see their scores, but instead would be shown photographs of children and statistics about the impact of AIDS on children worldwide. Test-takers would then be offered six ways they could help, including making a donation to World Vision, donating money to sponsor a child, sending e-mail messages to politicians, and forwarding the test to friends.
Results: 28,187 people viewed the AIDS test by clicking on a link in the e-mail message they received; at least 2,000 others also viewed the test. World Vision raised $59,660 and 9 percent of the Web-site visitors forwarded the test to a friend.
Multimedia: See a slide show of World Vision’s marketing campaign
BRONZE AWARD
The Black Repertory Theater
St. Louis
Title of program: Common Threads Media Kit
Agency: Rodgers Townsend, St. Louis
Objective: To increase press coverage and, as a consequence, ticket sales for its 29th season.
Budget: $500, excluding creative costs.
Lists: Journalists, specifically theater critics.
Media: Handcrafted quilts that illustrated the challenges faced by central characters in each of the theater’s plays were delivered to members of the press. Mailings also included a cloth envelope and a cloth-bound, hand-sewn book that gave further information on the season’s offerings.
Results: 43-percent increase in ticket sales compared with the previous season, and an 8-percent increase in full-season subscriptions.
Multimedia: See a slide show of The Black Repertory Theater’s marketing campaign
BRONZE AWARD
National Heart Foundation of Australia
Surry Hills, New South Wales
Title of program: Heart Foundation Spring Appeal
Agency: Pareto Fundraising, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Objective: To raise $282,885 and maintain the same number of supporters.
Budget: $148,900
Lists: 58,327 people who had given only once to charity
Media: After analyzing donor information to determine people most likely to give again, the charity sent folders with letters, personalized with references to the donor’s past gift, that described a 4-year-old girl named Astrid who had a cardiovascular disease. The package also held a fact sheet about Astrid’s heart problem, letters from Heart Foundation chief executives requesting donations, a photograph of Astrid in her hospital bed, and a copy of a drawing by her brother.
Results: Received $626,051 in net income, 221 percent more than the charity expected. Donations were made by 28.6 percent of people who received the mailing; the size of the average gift was $46.29.
Multimedia: See a slide show of National Heart Foundation of Australia’s marketing campaign
BRONZE AWARD
Red Cross Norway
Oslo
Title of program: Cross My Heart
Agency: MRM Partners Worldwide/McCann Direkte, Oslo
Objective: To attract visitors to a new Web site the Red Cross created as an alternative to its telephone hotline for young people.
Budget: $40,000
Lists: People ages 10 to 18.
Media: Drawing upon the organization’s experience with its phone hotline, online advertisements were created on an unnamed Red Cross Web site with the image of a public toilet wall and oddly-named Web site addresses that captured teenagers’ concerns and the questions they frequently asked such as http://www.aminormal.no.
The strange links piqued the audience’s curiosity, leading them to http://giveusaname.no, encouraging teenagers to suggest and vote on names for the Web site. Print advertisements were designed to look like missing-person posters, but instead of listing the name of the missing person, the unnamed Red Cross web site was mentioned. These advertisements were placed where actual missing-person signs were usually posted. Postcards with the same messages as the online and print advertisements were sent as well.
Results: The Web site received 50,000 visitors during the campaign’s eight-week period, compared with 56,000 calls made to the hotline during all of 2004. The Web site became so popular, it shut down temporarily over Christmas because of the number of questions sent.
Multimedia: See a slide show of Red Cross Norway’s marketing campaign
