Category: Social

Poldark’s charity is a funder’s dream

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Giles - Blog, Comms, Ethics, Fairer Companies, Marketing, Partnerships, Smarter Charities, Social

I wonder, if like me, you have been inspired by Ross Poldark, in the BBC1’s 70s remake, which has been watched by nearly 7 million viewers, based on Winston Graham’s Poldark books from the 1940s and 1950s.
Set in the 18th century, the main character, Ross Poldark, a British Army officer, returns to his home in Cornwall from the American Revolutionary War only to find that his fiancée, Elizabeth, having believed him dead, is about to marry his cousin, Francis Poldark. Ross attempts to restore his own fortunes by reopening one of the family’s tin mines. After several years he marries his servant girl, and is gradually reconciled to the loss of Elizabeth’s love.

There is plenty to enjoy – at its heart, a story of determination and doing the right thing. Poldark’s physique has been much debated, but it’s his approach, which we think throws up some great analogies for charities wanting to stay true to their beliefs and be true leaders. And they are;

1. At his core is a powerful belief in philanthropy, which comes through every pore

2. He has a vision – turning his new tin mine into a success- which he relentless pursues

3. He doesn’t let short term set backs take him of course, but knows when to call in extra help

4. He knows how to lead people with his vision – of finding tin

5. He understands what it takes to inspire people with words as well as actions

6. He’s keenly aware of how to inspire funders

7. He knows how to gain their continued support, and when to give updates on the progress that has been made

8. He’s happy to go out on a limb for what he believes in – in work and in love, however out of kilter and out of fashion this might be with his immediate circle

9. He leads by example and is consistent to his word

10. Despite much adoration, he is humble, welcoming and a genuinely consistent all round nice guy.

Can Ross Poldark do no wrong?

Revisit Marketing essentials

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Giles - Blog, Marketing, Partnerships, Smarter Charities, Social

Shortcut seminar by Green Banana Marketing on ‘Marketing essentials’ 16/05/2014

Green Banana Marketing’s top tips for charity marketing

Is it any easier to define what we mean by marketing for charities and NGOs? With squeezed budgets and complicated stakeholder needs, I sometimes wonder. If marketing for a charity is “to achieve organisational objectives and to bring the appropriate number of people from the agreed groups to engage and respond in a way that mutually satisfies both parties”, it’s surprising how few know their own organisational objectives, an obvious starting point for effective marketing. Fortunately, more know their own objectives and how these support the charity vision.

For today’s charities, innovation is important and effective, standout marketing. How to leverage digital touch points and to build long-term corporate partnerships with a solid shared strategic core, are also day-to-day worries.

Charity comms departments change names at a dizzying speed; from Marcomms, Supporter Engagement to Marketing, Fundraising as standalone to a merged super unit around a common digital belief! 65 years on and James “marketing mix” Culliton will be turning in his grave. He described the combination of elements involved in making any marketing decision; more commonly called the 4 ps of marketing, which have stood the test of time, it’s worth revisiting some of our vast history of marketing and how we fit in! Product, Promotion, Place and Price. And later 3 more Ps were added; People, Physical evidence and Process.

Charities deliver a staggering amount for very little resource but sometimes lack focus. Multi-million pound corporate campaigns tend to work to a much tighter bandwidth, such as changing sales by 5% with a specific audience segment.

NGOs tend to know their brands better than their audiences. Segmenting audiences, by identifying the most receptive moments to engage with people and mapping out user journeys would be a critical part to improving supporters and the charities focus.

We’re delighted that four of the ten most effective UK charities cited in the recent ‘Passionate About Collaboration’ report, which identified the UK’s most effective NGOs, are our clients, based on responses from over 100 NGO Chief Executives. Our approach chimes with the report’s main conclusions, which is to be more effective with reach and impact.

We are lucky enough to have worked with some of the very best marketing teams in the charity world from Fairtrade to Buglife – this we believe comes from a love of their organisation and a belief in what they can do.

Send all our leaders on the London Marathon

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Giles - Blog, Comms, Comms, Environment, Ethics, Fairer Companies, Greener Environmental, Income growth, Marketing, Olympics, Partnerships, Policy, Smarter Charities, Smarter Government, Social, Staffing and leadership, Sustainability

What’s not to like about the London Marathon? It’s welcoming – whether you are one of the 750,000 spectators, watching it on TV or more importantly one of the 38,000 people taking part. It’s pure joy, celebration and carnival– preceded by pain and I guess sometimes despair. What makes the London Marathon brand so special is the following:

we all know somebody who was running
the amazing sense achievement, of giving and taking part
the sense of fun and nothing is impossible or is judged to be ridiculous. The most eccentric charity runner was probably Lloyd Scott who took five days to complete the course wearing a deep-sea diving suit. And no doubt ushered in new regulations for the marathon, which state that the race must be completed in one day
the fact that this is one of the biggest fundraisers, during the last 30 years runners have made more than £500m for various charities

We were also all swept up by 2012 London Olympics and the amazing Gamemakers who really made their mark. Now contrast that with the lead up to the general election – the biggest event we were not really invited to be part of – in the weeks leading up to 7th May. We’ve not been involved in a conversation with the general election. The environment, sport and health have been little discussed. The Green party lost out, by playing down discussions about green issues, to demonstrate a broader understanding of other policy areas.

There has been very little discussion about sport, health and well being; tackling obesity and getting people back into sports. I applaud the This Girl Can campaign and what Dove has tried to do by normalising every day body shapes. But all this seems to have been given the two fingers by the most pointless and shallow ad of our time; an ad for a weight loss drink and beach perfect bodies.

Thank goodness for two bloggers Tara Costello and Fiona Longmuir, pictured, who posed next to the ad, rightly saying they are beach ready.

I want an election a bit like the London Marathon, where;

we know somebody who is running and want to support them
we feel involved
our differences are celebrated
the health of our bodies and the planet are central to the thinking

10 tips to maximise growth through your website

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Giles - Blog, Comms, Comms, Comms, Education, Environment, Ethics, Extreme weather, Fairer Companies, Greener Environmental, Greener Marine, Income growth, Marketing, Olympics, Partnerships, Policy, Policy, Protection, Recycling, Smarter Charities, Smarter Government, Social, Staffing and leadership, Sustainability

Many of the social organisations we work with are going through huge changes, using their “ten year strategy” to answer the question “what would a digitally-enabled organisation look like?” and “how will we thrive in an increasingly digital world?”. These are perfect questions to help shape the future and current offering and the following related questions helped us in working through our recent projects with the Fairtrade Foundation and The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).

Mapping the user experience and developing wireframe and related colour schemes for the navigation

1.What’s not working well at the moment? Where are audiences dropping off / not going – why is this?

2.What are your analytics telling you? Do you understand the audience needs and do these change by age / other demographics? Why is that? Do you know how people are using your site?

3.Are you ready for Mobilegeddon? Do start the process of ensuring your site works on different devices from interactive white screen to phones. You probably already know that Google’s search ranking will be affected by how mobile friendly your site it. There is an easy mobile friendly test you can do.

The mobile experience for teachers using Fairtrade resources

4.Is your SEO / social strategy good enough? Read Google’s guide to SEO, again Google will look harshly at copy that is too small and links that go nowhere. Defining your strategy beforehand (starting with the web copy), will help you prioritise what your main services are.

5. Do you have a strong concept / design? People like ideas- a strong concept can really lift your site usage.

6.Do you have the right sign-up points? Getting the balance right is essential; too many and people will click off your site. Having the main touch points clearly labelled will increase conversion to sales, and to your newsletter sign up.

Clear and interesting sign up points help the user

7.Why not ask people what they would like to use the site for in the future? Regular users of your site will often have as good ideas as anyone for how the experience could be made even better, we’ve found tapping this interest and using some of their ideas is crucial.

8.Are you using it as a living / agile website? Agile roll-outs are best. Too often the process is to map the user experience to a wireframe and then build the site over 10-16 weeks, which is fine. But it’s better to keep the site alive and agile, adding new features and functionality, so the site has a beginning but no end. There is no web 2.2.

9.Are you linking your CRM to your website? You increase conversion to your site by as much as 50% from users on your social channels, by a few simple campaigns.

10.Are you making lots of new friends? We’ve found links to your site from other respected organisations work wonders for new site visitors and increased search ranking.

If you need help with your web delivery, these are the first questions we would ask, it’s an easy checklist, which starts with your audience and builds things in an agile but logical way.

Giles Robertson, Founder and Managing Director of Green Banana Marketing Ltd, Marketing Soc. and RSA Fellow, Charity Group chairman, Trustee of Marine Conservation Society, member of 2Degrees board of advisers and the Sustainability Growth Group. Follow him on twitter @gogreenbanana or email at Giles@greenbananamarketing.com

Top ten charity campaigns of 2015

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Giles - Blog, Comms, Comms, Comms, Education, Environment, Ethics, Fairer Companies, Greener Environmental, Greener Marine, Income growth, Marketing, News, Partnerships, Policy, Protection, Smarter Charities, Smarter Government, Social, Sustainability

Well done to all those charities who have run bold campaigns in 2015. Not an easy year for the sector with many mergers still on the table, negative stories about about how charities operate in getting their vital funds, the debacle of the Kids Company closing and the Edelman Trust barometer showing trust in charities down 17%.

My top 10 charity campaigns this year are:

Greenpeace Awesome Again

It was good to see Greenpeace’s action in 2014 and mobilising millions to stop the Lego Shell partnership in 2015. Without Greenpeace, life would be much less interesting (and less organisations would be kept in check).

Je Suis Charlie

Not a charity but certainly a cause, I’m sure most would agree the Je Suis Charlie events were a critical response to the threat against the freedom of speech, inspired by the terrible attacks in France on 7^th January 2015.

This Girl Can

I loved This Girl Can campaign developed by Sport England as a celebration of active women doing their thing no matter how well they do it or how they look.

Big Issue Baristas

A very innovative and entrepreneurial way to diversify the work homeless people can do, by training them to make and sell cappuccinos – with eight carts in London, I wish it all the best.

Amnesty’s Virtual Reality ‘Aleppo’ Street

It’s tough bringing home your message and this campaign does just that with specially created headsets. It aims to transport people to a Syrian street to show the destructive effects of barrel bombs.

St John’s Ambulance ‘Chokeables’

A brilliant idea, using regular ‘chokables’ as the main characters, with voice-overs from Johnny Vegas and David Mitchell, adding weight.

The Lord’s Prayer ad (Just Pray)

The Church of England planned to run the spot before showings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, opening on 18 December. As an aside, The Odeon, Cineworld and Vue refused to show The Lord’s Prayer ad . The spot launched the Church of England’s justpray.uk website, which encourages prayer and offers tutorials.

I Saw Your Willy / Share Aware

NSPCC’s great campaign encourages children to think about what they share online; with this campaign they have developed a partnership with 02.

Life-changing Learning

The Open University has captured the strength of mind, effort and reward that comes from studying a part-time degree – a nice brand builder.

Unicef Snapchat of Nigeria

Unicef recruited Snapchat artists to redraw the pictures made by some of the 800,000 children forced to flee their homes in Nigeria, as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the horrific impact of the Boko Haram crisis on Nigerian children.

These charity campaigns are all brave and ambitious – but more importantly speak to us in a straightforward language, and in my view, increase the perceived value of the charities’ role on the issues. I believe they have every chance of driving new supporters and partnerships.

Wishing you all a great Christmas and New Year.

Giles Robertson, Director of Green Banana Marketing Ltd and independent Marketing Consultant, Marketing Society Fellow, Board Member, Marine Conservation Society

Follow him on twitter @gogreenbanana and Linkedin or email at Giles@greenbananamarketing.com

Shortcuts Stand out from the crowd – need to know brand and marketing essentials

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Giles - Blog, Comms, Comms, Comms, Education, Environment, Ethics, Extreme weather, Fairer Companies, Greener Environmental, Greener Marine, Income growth, Marketing, News, Olympics, Partnerships, Policy, Policy, Protection, Recycling, Smarter Charities, Smarter Government, Social, Staffing and leadership, Sustainability

Your invitation to Green Banana Marketing’s next Shortcuts event

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Shortcuts Series

Standout from the crowd – need to know brand and marketing essentials

Free Shortcuts seminar – Tuesday 10th September 2015 9 – 10am

Green Banana Marketing invite you to their free Charity Shortcuts seminar on Tuesday 10 September 2015 at 9am.

Charities need good marketing more than ever – with great pressures to gain new supporters (and more charities to standout from), building your appeal and what you stand for is essential.

Having a strong brand and marketing focus has never mattered more.

This innovative hours workshop will change the way you think about marketing and leave you bursting with ideas on how to build your brand personality, standout from the crowd and attract new supporters to your organisation.

Previous delegates said of the seminar; “very useful and inspiring – the fundamentals of marketing”

We would very much like to see you and a colleague at this Free Shortcuts seminar on Tuesday 10th September 2015 at 9am for one hour at the O2 Workshop, 229 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T7QG.

Places are limited to 20, so please do click here now to subscribe and book your free place.

‘Shortcuts’ seminars are intended to give you the most important information in the one-hour session. Drinks, cakes and a friendly networking session will follow the seminar.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Kind regards,

Visit our website

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Date: 10th September 2015Time:

9 – 10 am

Location:

02 Workshop

229 Tottenham Court Rd

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Green Banana Marketing shortcut seminar

Five ways to increase your influence with social media

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Giles - Blog, Smarter Charities, Social

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends”

Jeff Bezos, CEO at Amazon

Social media began almost a decade ago but it’s become a far more prominent and important part of most people’s lives than we could have predicted. It has become a more advanced version of the classic word-of-mouth – and companies try to use it as such.

Here are five tips to help increase your influence through social media platforms.

1. Know your online presence

Nowadays, almost all groups, charities, companies and individuals are running a social platform (or they should be). However, to make the most of your online presence, you need to be able to answer three fundamental questions:

What is my online presence? For instance, we’ve had clients not knowing about multiple Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook feeds, working inconsistently with different messages
Which social platforms best fit my supporter /audience base? For instance, Vine, the six second video sharing site, lends itself very well to WWF’s endangered species programme, but is perhaps less effective for the Samaritans’ support work
How are we measuring our influence online? Are we plotting and measuring where people go on our site, who is re-tweeting and what number of comments are we getting on our posts? (and, more importantly, how many people has this been fed on to)? Most platforms offer tools to measure how many times your pages or posts have been seen, the number of clicks per minute you’ve received, what content is the most appreciated (liked) by viewers, and so on.

2. Understand the best way to influence key audiences

Once you have found what is the best platform to reach your target audience, you need to find the best way to influence them through this channel. Should we produce posts, videos, photos and engage our target audience with games, petitions, actions, competitions etc? Keep them informed of how many actions and time spent equates to a certain level of influence. Amnesty do this really well, explaining that in 5 minutes you could sign a petition, with half a day’s support, you could attend a rally.

3. Produce shareable content – and make it easy to do so!

Most social platforms allow for the sharing of content so it is easy to engage with campaign videos, infographics, viral, posters, etc. in this most popular way. As stand out is tough on social platforms, all your creative talents should be focused on producing relevant photos to promote your posts and increase sharing opportunities. Make sure your content is not too heavy and long, and that people can quickly understand and share with their comments (and ownership). Heck, why not write a shareable chunk of text to go with posts, 140 word re-tweet friendly.

4. Consistent and flowing campaigns – don’t start and stop.

When you start being present on a social, make sure you keep your audience engaged by regularly posting information (at least twice a week). Show off past projects and successes, the difference you’ve made so far, your ‘storyboard’ or your personality – by interacting in this way, you will build engaged audiences. Keep you audience up to date. But don’t bore them.

5. Finally, let others do the heavy lifting!

Relevant partners will happily use your content, so build your campaign and change strategy with this in mind. You may well be the trusted partner in this programme and you can make use of networks, which may well quickly get to 1.5million people – if you are working with O2 Priority Moments, for instance. This is well worth doing if it can build support and engagement in a meaningful and relevant way.

Some of the best charities and environment social campaign from the last year include:

Campaign “Touch Yourself” for Breast Cancer Awareness

The campaign launched in October 2012 by F Cancer and Women’s Health and Men’s Health magazines, aimed to promote early cancer detection through self-checks for breast lumps. A Facebook app was created to pledge to perform a self-check and share a variety of 14 pre-written postcards with friends, encouraging them to do the same.

This is the king of campaigns, a perfect example of how to use of social channels. Facebook was the main channel, with sharable content engaging the target audience and ways to encourage friends to do the same.

Campaign Twestival for Charity: Water

“On 12 February 2009, 200+ international cities hosted a Twestival (Twitter + festival) to bring Twitter communities together to raise money for Charity: Water”. One week later the charity water staff flew to Ethiopia to drill the first well.

They immediately posted videos on Twitter related to their work, with some “re-tweetable“ information about water conditions, and published funds raised for each city. The Twitter activity allowed communities to engage, raise £174,899 funds for water projects, to build 55 wells, to serve water to over 17,000 people, and also to allow followers to see the day to day activity.

Next Shortcuts series event!

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Giles - Blog, Smarter Charities, Social

Charity influence with social media and our next Shortcuts event

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Giles - Blog, Smarter Charities, Social

Social media is perfect for the needs of charities and not-for-profit organisations. Facebook and Twitter have over 1.4 billion members – it’s a cheap, targeted, and an engaging way to reach and influence our audiences instantly.

We’re obsessed by online – apparently the UK spends more than any other country online (so we heard at Media Trust’s GoMobile Conference last week). And mobile is the next big thing. But how do you harness this to influence people and generate real change? We’ve been looking at how the best charity campaigns do just this.

80% of charities are actively using social media as part of their campaigns. There has also been a doubling of supporters on key UK charities social media channels in the past year alone.

We have listed some of the best uses of social media in the charity / environmental sector:

Fairtrade – battle for the farmers

More than 500 million of the world’s farmers produce 70 per cent of the world’s food but receive an average of only 3 per cent of the retail prices charged by supermarkets. Fairtrade’s campaign to get a better deal for the smallholder farmers highlighted the issue at this year’s G8 meeting.

Why it’s on the list
The campaign signed-up just under 10,000 people as a result of a brilliant, shareable campaign video and protest idea backed by some solid celebrity faces (Jonathan Ross included). The petition will be sent to David Cameron on World Fair Trade Day in May before the G8 meeting the following month.

Invisible Children – KONY campaign
The KONY 2012 campaign started as an experiment. Could an online video make an obscure war criminal famous? And if he were famous, would the world work together to stop him? Or would it let him remain at large?

Why it’s on the list
The fastest growing viral video of all time, with 100 million YouTube views in 6 days, 3.7 million people pledging their support raising over $12 million and becoming the “most liked” non-profit on Facebook with 3.1 million likes. KONY was the #9 most searched person on Google this year.

Avaaz.org – online petition platform

Launched in January 2007, Avaaz.org is a global online campaigning organisation that brings people-powered politics to international decision-making.

Why it’s on the list
Avaaz has grown to more than 10 million members worldwide.

It provides an online, low-cost process in which people all over the world can sign-up to try and make a difference – right injustices, save people’s lives, campaign for fairness – anything.

Breast Cancer Awareness UK – I like it on

Mysterious updates such as, ‘I Like It On’ followed by ‘the floor’, ‘the bed’, etc., started appearing on females’ Facebook social profiles. Women were actually talking about where they like to leave their handbags and this created curiosity and interest to find out about Breast Cancer Awareness UK.

Why it’s on the list
Clever, inexpensive way to create a buzz across Facebook and Twitter by leaving the work up to the audience themselves!

Movember – supporters of Prostate Cancer UK

Movember – the famous yearly campaign started back in 2003 from humble beginnings in Melbourne, Australia. Since then it has skyrocketed and throughout the month of November – you would struggle not to see any supporters rocking the facial hair.

Why it’s on the list
Last year, through Movember, Prostate Cancer UK (the main UK beneficiary of the campaign) managed to raise an amazing £26 Million.

Social media is a way for brands to interact with many people in a targeted away – often with instant results. As these examples have show, if the content is brilliant and intriguing, you have a good chance of people sharing it. A focused campaign, with brave responsive creative, will stand any charity in good stead.

We will be discussing 3 of these case studies in our next event as our successful Shortcuts seminar series continues on 3 May.

For more information, or to book your place – View event invite now!