11. RESULTS
£ Exceeded income and
participation target
Trending organically on
Twitter on the day
Almost 500 articles published
across a range of media outlets
Largest number of
hits to our website in
a single day
12. KEY LEARNING
Keep learning, analysing and innovating
throughout a campaign
Explore trend and audience driven strategic
innovation
Invest for the long-term as well as short-
term
Seek cross-organisational support to
support innovations
Historically/typically fundraising has focused on improving income streams on a day-to-day/month-by-month basis driven by targets, and often within the sector this is how performance is judged. BUTThere are bigger opportunities that Save the Children is tapping into that understands and prioritises innovation… where we can engage much bigger audiences and offer them something unique and innovative/newDEFINING INNOVATIONAt Save, innovation is not necessarily about hitting targets – the case study I’m going to talk about today has not necessarily been our biggest income earner over the past 12 months, but it has significantly increased Save’s position in supporter minds and in the public consciousness/sphere/publicityIt can be easy to think that innovation is only about technology, but for Save the Children, innovation is not necessarily about this. It’s also about strategic innovation, which cannot be compared with ROI – such strategic innovation comes from Save’s experience and years of learningsWhat is strategic innovation for Save the Children (this will be covered by an earlier speaker – need to be careful here)Longer term goals for the campaignLong term interests for the audienceLong term shift in cultural thought about fundraising and how we measure ourselves/successAt Save, we allow the resources – whether it’s time, or staff, or creative space – to create innovation
The Christmas fundraising market is very competitive, particularly in the scope of children’s charities. The need to stand out in an array of different asks was clear to us from the beginning of the thought process. With many charities making special pleas that this time of the year, we knew that we needed to create something which would cut through the crowded market and inspire people to act for Save the Children. In addition, this type of fundraising has significant competitors – work/office/schools spaces already have lots of campaigns targeted at them eg Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, Comic Relief, Jeans for Genes day, Wear it Pink etcWe needed something to stand out, and something that was different, fun and captured the imagination of those people taking partA lot of work went into the creativity of the campaign, including audience insight, focus groups, brainstorms, and engaging our creative agency. This enabled us to stand out from the crowd. Targeting a new, younger audience who may have previously been disengaged with our case – office based young professionals. This group doesn’t necessarily respond to mailing campaigns so its important to engage them in other waysNew generation of givers – a large amount of Save the Children’s supporter are older, so we wanted to tap into the next generation of givers and provide them with a campaign/opportunity that they could really get excited about.The benefits of participating for the audience (emotional, social, functional (expand? reference Beth Tegg research and presentation)Social – people sharing photos (CJD photos) on social media channels, sharing the experience of the day with colleagues, light touch for a satisfying return, connecting with individual storiesFunctional – entertainment, Christmas spirit/festivities, office community, corporate social responsibility (publicity)Emotional - ? Is there an emotional benefit for supporters of CJD – key learning for future?Or is this focus on social/functional due to a knowledge of our younger target audience who may not respond as well to emotional pleas?
Raise money – use a new technique to raise money for Save the Children’s workRaise awareness – raise awareness of Save the Children in the minds of potential new supportersEngage with new supporters – find new pockets of supporters to enable us to reach hundreds of thousands of supportersSave the Children was looking to develop a new low level mass participation proposition which would act as a simple and fun way to engage the nation with our cause. Needed to be fun and easy to do, and have mass reachChristmas Jumper Day was developed with the line of “Make the World Better with a Sweater”The campaign asked people to wear a festive jumper and make a suggested £1 donation towards the work of Save the Children. The day was held on the 14th December, which was the final full working Friday for many schools, and offices, before Christmas. To make the proposition as inclusive as possible those taking part could buy, knit or ‘festive up’ plain jumpers.
Brief description of campaign and how relates to the drivers of innovation.
Brief description of campaign and how relates to the drivers of innovation.
Our celeb shots delivered great national, regional and online coverage. The press labelled it as ‘national’ Christmas Jumper Day for Save the ChildrenPublicity before the event: Publicity with the tagline ‘Make the world better with a sweater’. Range of celebrity ambassadors included MyleeneKlass, Alison Steadman, John Snow, Ashley Jensen and Erin O’Connor who promoted the event through their social media channels as well as providing promotional image for our website. We were also pre-emptively featured in several news publications, including the Guardian, the Metro, Time Out and the Daily Mail, who’s online article drove 20 people per second to our Christmas Jumper Day sign up page. The Guardian followed this up by asking readers to post photos of their Christmas Jumpers on the Day itself, and the independent also has a Christmas Jumper photo round up on the day.
Publicity before the event: Publicity with the tagline ‘Make the world better with a sweater’. Range of celebrity ambassadors included MyleeneKlass, Alison Steadman, John Snow, Ashley Jensen and Erin O’Connor who promoted the event through their social media channels as well as providing promotional image for our website. Wide range of platforms: in addition to this online and print news presence, we utilised a wide range of platforms to reach as many people as possible. On the day itself, we were featured several times on the BBC Breakfast news, and I gave an interview to Sky News at lunchtime to boost visitor numbers and awareness of the day. Use of social media: social media played a significant role in our campaign. Before the event, our #whereswooly encouraged people all around the world to get involved in the campaign, asking supporters to take photos of themselves and their Christmas jumpers in exotic places. On the day itself, we encouraged social media users to share their images of their Christmas jumpers on facebook and twitter – using #xmasjumperday – as well as encouraging our celebrity ambassadors to get involved in the twitter use as well. Range of involvement: the range of involvement was huge for our campaign. From schools to workplaces, we had real excitement about the campaign from our supporters. We encouraged our corporate partners to get involved; here a great example is our corporate partner Morrisons, who had a great buy in from their staff and sent us lots of great photos from their stores across the countryCross-organisational tie in: we made sure to get all of the organisation involved, from our regional staff to our retail staff. We held launch events at our new London Living and Giving shops, with knit-ins to promote the day. We also held a events across the organisation to tie in with the increased awareness of Save the Children on the day. These included a fundraising convert on Friday evening, compered by Lauren Laverne and with lots of famous faces from the music industry wearing and performing in their Christmas jumpers, and a meeting with Samantha Cameron and local children in Christmas Jumpers at Downing Street on Christmas Jumper morningInternal events and enthusiasm: we also encouraged the festive atmosphere in the office to encourage staff buy in to the campaign. These included a mini Christmas market, a Christmas photobooth with the opportunity to upload pictures to social media, and an internal awards ceremony for the best jumper efforts.
Range of involvement: the range of involvement was huge for our campaign. From schools to workplaces, we had real excitement about the campaign from our supporters. We also encouraged our corporate partners to get involved; here a great example is our corporate partner Morrisons, who had a great buy in from their staff and sent us lots of great photos from their stores across the countryCross-organisational tie in: we made sure to get all of the organisation involved, from our regional staff to our retail staff. We held launch events at our new London Living and Giving shops, with knit-ins to promote the day. We also held a events across the organisation to tie in with the increased awareness of Save the Children on the day. These included a fundraising convert on Friday evening, compered by Lauren Laverne and with lots of famous faces from the music industry wearing and performing in their Christmas jumpers, and a meeting with Samantha Cameron and local children in Christmas Jumpers at Downing Street on Christmas Jumper morningInternal events and enthusiasm: we also encouraged the festive atmosphere in the office to encourage staff buy in to the campaign. These included a mini Christmas market, a Christmas photobooth with the opportunity to upload pictures to social media, and an internal awards ceremony for the best jumper efforts.
Forecasted vs actualWe were pleased to see hundreds of thousands of people wearing their jumper on Friday 14th December – we’re still counting up the money but it looks like we’ve raised over £250,000We engaged a number of celebs including Lauren Laverne, MyleeneKlass and John Snow – and Samantha Cameron really helped us to get coverageWe were trending on Twitter, organically, on the day, which was fantastic to seeWe found that the campaign did reach out to new audiences, but was also embraced by our current supportersThere were almost 500 articles published about the campaign across a range of media outlets
Focus on learnings, not on immediate income is important for longer term strategic change and enabling innovationNever the end – need to keep innovating and evolving and taking ideas further increasing big opportunities into bigger opportunitiesLearning, analysing and growing from each innovation It was essential for Save the Children to make its mark on the campaign, which we did, and linking the campaign back to our cause with “Make the World Better with a Sweater” and putting our logo in a Christmas Jumper really helped ensure people know that wearing Christmas Jumpers is for Save the Children.The ask was simple and appealed to a wide range of people – it ties in well with a current trend It does raise significant money and engage significant numbers of peopleCross organisational working was key to the success of the campaign – fundraising alone could not have had this impact, we needed the support of our marketing and comms team including our media teamData capture could be improved – we got lots of involvement over some informal/quick moving channels – how to we capture this data and target people to increase our income at the next campaign/ask