They have worked all around the world in Africa, Asia, Europe and America. Their idea is to eliminate caged zoos and to 'keep wildlife in the wild'. Below is their mission statement:
The Born Free Foundation is a dynamic international wildlife charity, devoted to compassionate conservation and animal welfare. Born Free takes action worldwide to protect threatened species and stop individual animal suffering. Born Free believes wildlife belongs in the wild and works to phase out zoos. We rescue animals from lives of misery in tiny cages and give them lifetime care.
Born Free protects lions, elephants, tigers, gorillas, wolves, polar bears, dolphins, marine turtles and many more species in their natural habitat, working with local communities to help people and wildlife live together without conflict. Our high-profile campaigns change public attitudes, persuade decision-makers and get results. Every year, Born Free helps hundreds of thousands of animals worldwide.
Much of the focus of the BornFree Foundation is to prevent animal extinction, which can be clearly seen in some of their previous ad campaigns:
From this point I started to look at previous success stories in charity advertising campaigns, in order to break down what I would up against:
This image was part of the British Heart Foundation’s awareness campaign about the link between clogged arteries and smoking. These billboards showing a fat filled cigarette, along with the campaign’sTV advert, encouraged 14,000 smokers to kick the habit.
Oxfam launched its first campaign, Greek Week in 1943. It aimed to ease the mass starvation that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Nazi-occupied Greece. Despite their own wartime hardships, the residents of Oxford (where Oxfam was founded) raised £10,700 for the Greek Red Cross. This is equivalent to approximately £370,000 in today’s money.
These four posters formed a hard-hitting advertising campaign for children’s charity Barnardo’s in 2003. The image showing a cockroach crawling from the mouth of a baby is one of the most complained about advertisements made in the UK. Barnardo’s has consistently used emotive advertising throughout its history.
Clarissa Baldwin – former chief executive of the Dogs’ Trust – was sitting at the kitchen table chatting to her husband when she thought of the phrase “A Dog is for life, not just for Christmas”. It didn’t start as an advert, but as a famous car sticker, which are now displayed on approximately three million cars.
In 2013 Unicef Sweden launched a campaign “pointing the finger at the public’s slacktivism”. In the campaign’s most watched video, a boy called Rahim tells you he’ll be alright because because Unicef Sweden’s Facebook page has nearly 200,000 likes. The campaign also included an image that said “Like us on Facebook, and we will vaccinate zero children against polio”. The four videos made for the campaign were watched more than 750,000 times in 195 countries, and were tweeted out more than 10,500 times. As a result, enough money was raised to vaccinate 637,324 children against polio.
This famous image was taken by Lord Snowdon nearly 40 years ago for a Muscular Dystrophy campaign. It was recreated by the charity in 2010. Disability campaigners argued that the image reinforced society’s view that wheelchair users don’t have a life.
The Poppy Appeal launched in 1921 and a year later had its own poppy factory, employing disabled servicemen. British Legion, the charity behind the appeal, often reinvents its November campaign. In 2014 the appeal took to the Tower of London with its Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation. The sea of red poppies captured the public’s imagination, with nearly five million people said to have visited it, and commemorated the centenary of the first world war.
In 1994 Emma Sjoberg, Tatjana Patitz, Heather Stewart Whyte, Fabienne Terwinghe and Naomi Campbell appeared in the well-known poster for animal charity Peta.Campbell angered activists 15 years later by becoming the face of a furrier firm.
In 2007 Stonewall launched this campaign. Its design
was developed with school pupils and teachers as part of Stonewall’s Education for All campaign to tackle homophobic bullying in schools. After the launch, posters appeared on 600 billboards in England, Scotland and Wales, and schools across Britain. The slogan has since diversified to include Some People Are Bi. Get Over It! and Some People Are Trans. Get Over It! and has also appeared in other languages.
SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
Since the #nomakeupselfie campaign raised £8m for Cancer Research, charities have been asking how they can replicate its success. Whilst it's undoubtedly a game changer, charity social media campaigns come in many flavours and there are lessons we can learn from them all. Here are five.
Movember
Founded in 2003 to fundraise for men's health through sponsored moustache growing, Movember has built a community based on shared humour. The campaign garnered 1.2m social media mentions alone last year, whilst fundraising currently stands at £63.9m. In 2013 it doubled its Facebook reach and increased retweets by 45%. Prostate Cancer UK, one of Movember's main beneficiaries, also reported a rise in calls to its helplines. Whilst some may ask which way next for Movember, its social media success is still strong and can be attributed to its wit, irreverent tone of voice and camaraderie.
Action on Hearing Loss
Last year Action on Hearing Loss convinced John Lewis to add subtitles to its Christmas TV advert, just by asking on Twitter. It was a very simple but effective social media campaign that nevertheless made a big difference to its beneficiaries. Campaigns don't always have to reach millions of people; asking one influential person for something at the right time on social media can have just as much impact. I've seen small charities use this approach successfully.
#nomakeupselfie
The #nomakeupselfie campaign, which began with people posting images of themselves without make up on social networks, wasn't started by Cancer Research but their social media team quickly got involved and asked people to donate via text. The campaign raised £8m in just one week. This kind of grassroots viral campaign is impossible to replicate but charities of all sizes can position themselves to take advantage of the next social media phenomenon by responding rapidly and creating a sense of community around the movement. Cancer Research did this very skilfully by making donors feel appreciated and being transparent about the ways in which funds raised will be spent.
UNICEF- Likes Don't Save Lives
UNICEF Sweden ran a campaign last year to show that likes on Facebook weren't enough to help them save children's lives. They created four YouTube videos, including one of a child saying (ironically) that he feels hopeful because of the amount of likes UNICEF's Facebook page has achieved. Each video ended with the message that likes can't fund vaccinations. The videos were viewed more than 750, 000 times across 195 countries, and led to more than 10,500 tweets (8,000 of which were international) during the campaign period. It is also likely to have converted supporters who were less involved into donors. Charities shouldn't be afraid to use social media campaigns to ask some difficult questions, but this needs to be followed up with a good case for the ask.
Rethink- #FindMike
Rethink's #FindMike campaign sought to reunite Jonny Benjamin, who lives with schizophrenia, with the man who talked him down from jumping off Waterloo Bridge six years' ago. They devised a multichannel campaign that included social media, digital content including videos, broadcast interviews and newspaper coverage. #FindMike became the top trending topic on Twitter in the UK and Rethink received 5,000 new Facebook likes, 2,600 new Twitter followers, and a fivefold increase in traffic to its site. Most importantly, the coverage helped reunite Jonny with Neil Laybourne, the man who saved him. Key to its success was that social media was part of an integrated approach across several channels. This is a brilliant way to boost your social media campaigns, even if you're on a tight budget. The timing was also important- it was a positive story in January, which people were keen to share through their social networks.
What do these campaigns have in common? Having a visible brand on social media, planning carefully and being ready to respond quickly are essential.
GUEST POST: 10 innovative charity campaigns
In this guest post, freelance social media manager Anita Reid takes a look at ten innovative charity campaigns and why they were successful.
What we are seeing now is miraculous in terms of utilising digital mediums to spread the word on charity initiatives. Social media, blogs and aggregated news sources have all combined to form a juggernaut force in terms of bringing in user impressions – none seen as clearly as in the plethora of campaigns that are being executed today.
Listed are some of the finest examples of charitable campaigns that soared past the limits in terms of innovative marketing. Each point mentioned has brought forth an amazing return on investment to the organisations involved and gave off a grand sense of awareness to fundraising efforts that would have otherwise not been possible without the power of social media.
1. Water is Life #firstworldproblems
Water is Life executed an initiative called ‘#firstworldproblems’ that proved to be a prime example of hashtag hijacking done extraordinary well. For those in the dark, #firstworldproblems are a series of popular tweets and memes that shed comedic light on Western society’s miniscule day-to-day problems, which pale in comparison to real world issues happening around the globe.
The video spot campaign featured victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquakes reading tweets of the popular #firstworldproblems hashtag in commendable fashion, imploring to us that, yes indeed, there are far more important problems in the world. The ad made a great effort in identifying a viral online trend, then applying it to a real life situation. Water is Life simply presented something to people that was familiar and used it as a vessel to make the people aware of another – genius!
2. Mater Prize Home
Mater Prize Lotteries is a way to fund the Mater Foundation, a well-known Australian institution. They are known for their cancer research and charity work. Mater Prize is a charity in which dream homes are drawn from a raffle, with the proceeds going directly towards the research and care of patients in Mater hospitals. The foundation is truly a blessing for patients within the Mater facilities and so it made perfect sense to see them team up with XCOM Media in delivering a campaign that not only benefited a charitable cause, but did so locally and on a slim budget.
The campaign’s central slogan was “Change Lives”, and it offered an incentive to sports fans in getting the chance to win a door prize and, on a larger scale, an ‘Ultimate Lions Experience’ prize pack, which was accessible after the event as an online draw. The door prize entries were pooled in and directed via email to the Change Lives website. The locally-executed campaign delivered high quality conversions to Mater and XCOM, giving them the boost of impressions and confidence needed to proceed with future online campaigns
The campaign drew in over 2500 new donors to the foundation, and on top of that the charity got their email addresses, phone numbers and huge exposure too.
3. Red Cross Earthquake (Text to Donate)
Another successful campaign that popped up following the 2010 Haiti earthquakes came via the Red Cross with its ‘Text to Donate’ formula for raising funds. Within a mere two days, the organisation managed to accumulate over $5M from donors worldwide through mobile users texting “Haiti” and “YES”, which translated to $10 per message. The success can be attributed largely to the simple and easy process in which mobile users could act on. Over 500 thousand people answered the call-to-action.
4. Movember
Over the past few years, November has slowly taken shape into a new calendar event – Movember. For those in the dark, Movember is a month in which fundraisers grow prominent moustaches to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer and its related charities. The number of campaigns that have started to evolve within the Mo’ umbrella are at staggering numbers, and it’s because of the fact that it is a simple and fun act that males are able to participate in to encourage awareness. Ladies, too, have joined in on the fun, donning Mo-flavored t-shirts, jewellery, and everything in between.
5. RSPCA TV Ad
The RSPCA launched a campaign to expose people to cruelty of pets living in unfortunate homes (or lack thereof). The specific TV spot displayed numerous first-person accounts of what it would be like to be a frail kitten or wounded dog in an environment that is harsh and unpleasant. The ad clearly depicts the feeling of being abused or neglected, forcing the viewer to sympathise and become well-aware of the RSPCA’s main objective. Attention from the audience was immediately drawn in due to its urgent nature, and overall the campaign affected viewers exactly how it was set out to.
6. The Big Dig Campaign
Headed by non-profit organization WaterAid, The Big Dig Campaign was a donation-via-text initiative set up to help build schools, improve living conditions, and to provide clean water for the hundreds of thousands of Malawi citizens.
A smart promotional method that the organisation utilised was through the use of Instagram. By showcasing the positive changes of donations in real-time and being able to visually see it on the users end, it provided the campaign with a profound sense of legitimacy. Because of this, donations reached upward of over $3M, matched later on by government funds, and furthermore providing over 100,000 Malawi residents with clean water and new homes to live in.
7. Rachel’s 9th Birthday Wish
A touching true story of inspiration reached the world when Rachel, a young girl celebrating her birthday, asked her friends and family to not give her birthday gifts. She instead insisted that people help her in reaching a $300 goal via MyCharity: Water, which goes to helping children in Africa get clean water. The goal was left unfinished, but it still gave Rachel the conviction to push forward into the following year.
Unfortunately not long after her birthday, Rachel was involved in a fatal car crash, leaving her final goals unfulfilled. Because of this, Rachel’s family and friends rallied together to have her MyCharity campaign reopened and her story has since become a viral sensation on social media platforms, resonating with captivated audiences all across the globe.
Her campaign went on to amass over $1.2M in just over 60 days – proof that a single selfless act of kindness can reach people everywhere if the intent is genuine and the story is captivating enough.
8. Batkid Saves San Francisco
Make-A-Wish Foundation brought about one of the most widely searched campaigns of 2013 with its plot in granting a wish to leukaemia patient, Miles Scott. The 5 year-old’s wish was to be Batkid, and so together with the City of San Francisco, Make-A-Wish sought out to fulfil his request.
The city came out in droves as streets and buildings were turned into Gotham overnight. When everything was ready, a scenario in which ‘Batkid saves the city’ took place. The grand scheme drew in thousands of onlookers and amassed millions of tweets and a tremendous amount of mainstream media coverage. Much like the Rachel-story, Miles inspired and grabbed people’s attention, pulling them in to cheer for the good guys.
9. Refuge – How To Look Your Best The Morning After
Refuge, in collaboration with YouTube Vlogger Lauren Luke, came up with an interesting approach to raising awareness for domestic abuse issues. Specialising in video tips for make-up application, Lauren uploaded a tutorial in which she appeared before the camera as a victim of abuse, using the beauty tutorial as guide to covering up the bruises and cuts.
With over 400,000 YouTube subscribers consisting primarily of young women, Refuge aimed their message to her specific demographic, which naturally was the absolute perfect target audience for its broad message.
10. To Mama With Love
Epic Change, a non-profit organisation in support of grassroots activists, launched a Mother’s Day campaign, aptly named ‘To Mama With Love’. It involved setting up an online map of the world, encouraging people from all over to upload photos of their mothers. This, in turn, would create a landing page in which funds could be raised in support of female activists in Afghanistan, Nepal, and Tanzania.
For a smaller scale initiative, the campaign took in just over $16k and saw over 300+ fundraising pages created. Overall, it provided people with a different approach to thinking about Mother’s Day and was greatly beneficial in assisting those in need.
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