More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (11)
Similar to Why charities + content = change - Amanda Nicolas, 8 May 2014
Similar to Why charities + content = change - Amanda Nicolas, 8 May 2014 (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Why charities + content = change - Amanda Nicolas, 8 May 2014
- 1. Charities + Content = Change Lunch & Learn May 2014
- 2. We help charities use content to its full potential to achieve whatever they’re trying to do.
- 3. Content takes on the biggest challenges charities face Raising awarenes s Building advocacy Changing behaviour Inspiring action Fund- raising
- 5. Emotive video still works Raising awarenes s
- 7. Image-led content: Save the Children As part of World Press Freedom Day, Save the Children partnered with photographer Agnes Montanari to implement this photo project for #Syria's children in Za’atari refugee camp: giving the children a chance to regain confidence and hope, by enabling them to share their stories through photography. Raising awarenes s
- 8. Image-led content: Buzzfeed Coverage of homophobia in Russia in the lead up to the winter Olympics had 3+ million views Shelter were the first UK charity to use Buzzfeed with content on “The Utter Insanity of Britain’s Housing Market” Raising awarenes s
- 9. Lists: Shelter Shelter receives more calls to their call centre than they can handle, and a lot of the problems people call up about could have been avoided if they’d been given good advice before renting a home. At Zone we worked with the Shelter call centre team to come up with a set of recurring issues and structured them in list of 10 tips for viewing a home to rent. Raising awarenes s
- 10. Joining the conversation: PCUK Zone helped Prostate Cancer UK win a popular vote to secure their Official Charity Partnership with The Football League. Using 1 in 9 stat we sourced a writer for each of the 72 Football League clubs to write about celebrating the greatest number 9s in the history of their clubs. Raising awarenes s
- 13. Men United, PCUK Converting interest into tangible, usable commitment to fight prostate cancer Building advocacy
- 14. The Girl Declaration Ask: read it, support it, make it famous Building advocacy
- 16. How much do facts and figures change hearts and minds?
- 18. It Gets Better ProjectSet up in response to the suicide of teenagers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The project aims to inspire hope through the video messages of gay adults. Launched in 2010, there are now more than 50,000 videos, some from high profile people including Obama, which have collectively had 50,000 million views. Changing behaviour
- 21. DVLA and organ donation Inspiring action • “Every day thousands of people who see this page decide to register [as an organ donor]”(with image of a group of people) • “Every day thousands of people who see this page decide to register [as an organ donor]”(no photo) • “Every day thousands of people who see this page decide to register [as an organ donor]”(with image of organ donation logo) • “You could save or transform up to nine lives as an organ donor.” • “If you support organ donation please turn your support into action” • “You could save or transform up to nine lives as an organ donor” • “Three people die every day because there are not enough organ donors.” • “If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so, please help others.”
- 22. Casserole club Inspiring action "It was amazing to hear first hand how much of an impact Casserole Club had on Kay after only one meal share. She loved getting to meet and have a chat with someone new in her area."
- 23. 5. Fundraising
- 24. Charitable giving in the UK 1980 1990 2000 2010 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 Source: Behavioural Insights Team Fund- raising
- 25. Tapping into selfish intention Casserole club – meet people in your area/ stop feeling bad about throwing away food Swishing - clear out your wardrobe to make space for new things Marathon - get fit and look better And all of it can be pushed out on social to enhance an individual's "online me”. Fund- raising
- 26. Yes, content takes on the biggest challenges charities face Raising awarenes s Building advocacy Changing behaviour Inspiring action Fund- raising
Editor's Notes
- In this lunch and learn I’m going to explore what digital content can and is doing for charities.
- I’m talking about this because this is what we do at Zone: we help charities use content to achieve whatever they’re trying to do. By content I’m talking about video, images and words. Now clearly charities are trying to do lots of different things but broadly speaking they’re all trying to bring about some sort of change.
- So when it comes to bringing about change, I believe that content is taking on the biggest challenges charities face:Raising awarenessBuilding advocacy Changing behaviour Inspiring action Fundraising I’m going to use this session to showcase work that Zone, and other organisations are doing which demonstrates this. I also went to the Media Trust Spring conference last month, so a lot of the examples I’ll be using are from there. Just to be clear, these five up there, they aren’t a definitive list. It’s just my opinion based on what I’ve taken out of working on pro-social over the past year…
- Historically charities have relied heavily on emotive, hard-hitting television adverts to raise awareness. And in today’s digital world it’s video, viewed online as well as broadcast on-air. And that form of content still works well to get the message across. Although we’ve come a long way from the 1980s comic relief ads.
- Age UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eogbx68da4Roger McGough poem Yes, this video does a great job at getting across the message that we’re all implicated, and that there’s a support. Video is expensive, and previously that made it prohibitive for most organisations.
- Low-fi film: Would you give your jacket to Johannes? SOS Children's Villagehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9O8j9QPZc8Set-up a hidden camera and a young boy in Oslo - over two days.
- So what non-video content is effective? Image-led content. As part of World Press Freedom Day, Save the Children partnered with photographer Agnes Montanari to implement this photo project for #Syria's children in Za’atari refugee camp: giving the children a chance to regain confidence and hope, by enabling them to share their stories through photography.https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154097772950191.1073741857.117476785190&type=1But what charities have to be mindful of is that we’re easily de-sensitised. This piece of content hasn’t had heaps of engagement - doesn't start a conversation. De-sensortised, suspicious mind-set.
- Goodness knows Buzzfeed serves up a lot of content stuffed with celebrities and cats, but Luke Lewis, the UK editor, is committed to taking using image-led, accessible lists to cover causes. Shelter were the first UK charity to use Buzzfeed with content on “The Utter Insanity of Britain’s Housing Market”. There’s been a lot of criticism of this light-touch approach, but Luke Lewis’ defence is that it should be taken as a bridge into exploring the issue in more detail. And not all their image-led content is light-touch
- Accessible content that meets a need, for exampleShelter receives more calls to their call centre than they can handle, and a lot of the problems people call up about could have been avoided if they’d been given good advice before renting a home. At Zone we worked with the Shelter call centre team to come up with a set of recurring issues and structured them in list of 10 tips for viewing a home to rent. http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/private_renting/renting_privately/tips_for_viewing_a_home_to_rent - this new page is one of the most visited pages on the Shelter website, so within a year we’re looking to see a drop in calls relating to these problems.
- Zone helped Prostate Cancer UK win a popular vote to secure their Official Charity Partnership with The Football LeagueWe then set about activating the partnership. The one-in-nine stat gave us a strong editorial hook – the No9 shirt being the traditional preserve of football’s glamour boys: the strikers.We sourced a writer for each of the 72 Football League clubs, from Accrington Stanley to York City. These writers are devoted fans with access to other supporters online through their blogs, message boards, fanzines and Twitter accounts. And we set them to work celebrating the greatest No9s in the history of their clubs.The content is created by writers with big social media followings, and our wider network of club bloggers help to ensure it reaches millions of fans via the most relevant digital channels.When we launched our 72 ‘Best No9’ features in August 2012, they accounted for a 170 per cent increase in unique visitors to the site in the first week. Since then, traffic to the site is up 70 per cent year-on-year, with football content driving a third of all visits.On Twitter – our main digital channel for distribution – tweets relating to prostate cancer and football have now reached more than 2.4 million people.In November 2012, we won the prize for Best Digital Solution (not-for-profit) at the International Content Marketing awards.
- When someone cares deeply about a cause then there can be a desire to rally family and friends and their community to get behind it too. When that cause empowers supporters to get involved then change can be accelerated.
- Look at Freecycle, an environmental not-for-profit movement with the goal of easing the burden on landfills. It has 5,000+ groups set up by individuals, and 7 million members. That’s a lot less stuff in landfill.
- The Men United campaign that Zone has and is working on emphasising that we were building a team to defeat prostate cancer. Aim to build team spirit and togetherness. Taps into Bill Bailey's tone of voice... "Listen up Chris", "Now more than 100,000 have taken the test and our squad is growing faster than Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant.""But we can’t relax, team. We’ve set an ambitious new target of 250,000 and we need you lot to keep spreading the word. Share the Men United test on Facebook and Twitter or by forwarding this email, and let’s make sure we keep up the pressure on our biggest rival – prostate cancer.”Using the database to grow the database.
- Girls were left out of the original Millennium Development Goals. The Girl Declaration has been written to make sure that doesn't happen again – it’s a collection of 5 goals and 7 principles from more than 500 girls living in poverty and 25 development organisations.We used Twitter and the hashtag #GirlDeclaration to drive advocacy. We explicitly asked people to "make it famous". You've got to question why your audience would push something out into their social space. There's a suggestion there that this could be famous. And it's my hunch that people wanted to be seen publically to be behind something before it gets big. So what makes this so powerful is it uses language that appeals to the benefits of the user.
- Facts and figures do change hearts and minds but only in the short term. Which is why the emotional connection of peoples’ stories are so powerful. And how better to communicate real life stories than through UGC.
- You hear that there's a one in four or even sometimes one in three chance of getting cancer. And that's a scary stat. But the uneasy feeling it has on people comes and goes pretty quickly. It's not sustainable, and what charities really need is long term support. What Macmillian are so good at doing is people front and centre. The charity has the word "support" in its name, and what I find very impressive is their ability style of supportive storytelling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qp8zZ-OU7g
- UGC works especially well in this example as it breaks down the taboo by addressing it, and multiple times in lots of different ways. There’s also a timeline tracking ways in which things are getting better in terms of policy and other wins.
- Movember - it's been running for ten years, and I think they managed to do the impossible in that they made the moustache cool. Through tone of voice - using humour. Every time you shave a moustache dies. Humour brings people together first.. then onto the common ground. Comedy can be a bridge into far more complex ideas. Building on the trust from the laugh. Likely to believe that you share their values. In 2013 7 out of 10 top YouTube videos were funny. It's the approach we're taking with a climate change institution, but that's for another day.
- The DVLA and organ donor register tried out different messaging on the form to apply for a drivers licence or renew a tax disc - the timeliness of the ask is key to this.The trial ran for five weeks, during which time more than one million people saw one of the eight variants…The “winning” text has now become standard on the DVLA website. On average people who saw that message were almost a third more likely to sign up than those who saw the lowest-ranking version. The winning message tapped into the grain of human nature. The selfish intention behind an action is all powerful.
- The selfish intention behind an action is all powerful.
- Fundraising is important, but it’s also an incredibly tough market…1) Fundraising, raising money to fund services, research, etc
- Over the past 30 years charitable giving in the UK has flatlined. On average it equates to just 0.2% of consumption spending, which is roughly what an average UK household spends on cheese. And that’s taking digital into account. That comes from the Behavioural Insights Team, who spoke at the Media Trust Spring conference I went to last month, so a lot of the examples I’ll be using are from there. The point of showing you this graph is to demonstrate that charities have to explore other ways to bring about change, and that’s really the area we focus on at Zone.
- More examples of selfish intention behind an action:casserole club - don't feel bad about wasting foodswishing - clear out wardrobe to make space for new thingsmarathon - get fit And all of it can be pushed out on social to enhance an individual's "online me”.Charities need to be asking what's the sales message? What’s in it for the other person.
- Raising awarenessThe best content raises an issue in a way that’s a conversation starter. It inspires interaction. That could go something like, “far out have you seen what’s going on over there” or “everybody should know this” or “this is super useful”Building advocacy If you want your supporters to spread the word for you, it helps to give them the words, which means getting tonally spot-on. Changing behaviour This is largely about breaking down taboos or confronting difficult subject areas. UGC does this incredibly well, as does humour. Inspiring action &Fundraising These two challenges present similar opportunities, and that’s around tapping into selfish intention and at the right time.