Getting the Most out of Your Charity Advertising Campaign

Charity advertising can take many different forms; whether it’s raising awareness of an issue, fundraising, or getting people to take a specific action. With a clearly defined purpose, most charities have a major head start in retaining loyal audiences. But in a world where engagement rates are diminishing, how can you connect with new audiences with your charity advertising campaign? How do you overcome compassion fatigue? And once you’ve got someone’s attention, how do you translate this into action? We’ve put together our key learnings and techniques from working within the charity sector, and how to get the most out of your campaign.

WHAT’S YOUR OBJECTIVE?

First and foremost, it’s crucial to identify what it is you are trying to achieve. Usually we can break this down into a few key areas:

- Awareness (of an issue)

- Awareness (of the charity)

- Fundraising (donations)

- Supporter action (sign-ups or events)

While we know that almost every charity is looking to do all of these at any one time, a campaign is most effective if it has a single minded message. It’s important to give your audience a clear outtake with a tangible and measurable goal.

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

It might sound obvious, but understanding who you want your message to reach is critical to the success of your campaign. It can be tempting to target ‘everyone’, but you’re more likely to see results if you focus in on a specific group of people with a similar set of behaviours. For example, it might be that you feel you have a highly loyal audience of women aged 60+, but you’re looking for younger supporters to spread an awareness message.

Social listening is a great place to start in understanding how your audience behaves, identifying the channels your audience they use and what content they are engaging with. However, often the best insights come from a simple face to face; primary research using focus groups and surveys reveals simple human truths which can be tapped into to guide creative.

CALL TO ACTION

Once you know who your audience is, you need to consider what you want you want them to do. Applying a ‘Theory Of Change’ to your campaign can help give your audience the sense that their small action is having a wider impact on society. By giving them an output, like a petition which could ladder up to legislative change, or a mechanic to contact their local MP, your audience will feel more inclined to get involved. It’s about showing them they have the power to make a worthwhile difference beyond a share or a like.

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA FOR YOUR CHARITY ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN?

RELEVANCY AND REFRAMING THE NARRATIVE

Relevancy is key for engagement and for ensuring your concept lands with your target audience. If your campaign is out of touch with the times, it’s likely to be out of touch with its audience. Therefore, think about ways to tap into the zeitgeist. How can you make your campaign take part in already existing discourse or cultural expression?

Equally important to cut-through is looking at how to reframe well trodden narratives. How are other charities and causes talking about the issue? How can you tell the story in a different way? Often this means a shift away from typically ‘bleaker’ more emotive charity ad formats; humour can be a useful tool when shifting perceptions, for example.

START WITH SOCIAL

Social media enables charities to reach a highly targeted audience on a smaller budget than more expensive broadcast channels like TV or Cinema. Because you can optimise budget depending on your objective, it avoids wastage, and allows you to reach people in an environment where they are open to conversation.

However, if you do plan on taking the campaign to bigger screens, social media is a great place to test out which audiences are responding before investing in more expensive media outlets.

TO CONCLUDE

When it comes to advertising campaigns, charities need to be clear about what they stand for and be able to show how we, the public, can actively make a difference too – always coming back to the Theory of Change, and giving your audience a sense of agency in helping to fight for an issue.

With so much noise to contend with, a charity advertising campaign needs to be current, bold and above all, prepared to take a calculated creative risk; stepping away from traditional narratives is key to generating meaningful results.

To recap, here’s a basic charity marketing strategy template:

1. What’s the objective of your campaign?

2. Get to know your target audience. Figure out what makes them tick and what appeals to them.

3. Call to action. How can we apply a theory of change?

4. Pick your media outlets. Start with social and scale up based on learnings.

To use as an example, here are some of our best charity marketing campaigns where we reframed the narrative:

Charity marketing campaign: The Wind In The Willows – The Wildlife Trusts

The idea: We wanted to raise awareness about wildlife depletion in the UK, but without being overly bleak. Our research showed that people are less receptive nowadays to overly preachy messaging or guilt-inducing attacks. To counter this, we took much loved characters from a popular childhood tale, and transported them into a dystopian 2019.

The result: Over 190 pieces of media coverage, a 60% engagement rate, featured in cinemas nationwide and over 1million online views.

Charity marketing campaign: Most Shocking Second A Day – Save The Children

The idea: Similar to the above, we understand that often the public find it hard to connect with what they see on television or in the news – especially when the message is incredibly bleak. To get UK citizens to engage with what was happening in Syria, we decided to bring the Syrian refugee crisis home.

We used a popular, and relevant, second-a-day format to engage with parents and show the crisis in a painfully familiar setting. The campaign struck an international chord, and became one of the most successful charity films of all time.

The Result: 150million views, 2.5 million shares, 93% uplift in fundraising during the campaign

Charity marketing campaign: Everything is NOT Awesome – Greenpeace

The idea: Greenpeace were struggling to engage new supporters as marketing was perceived to be overzealous and off-putting. They wanted to end a destructive partnership between Lego and Shell, fearing the catastrophic impact Shell could have on the environment. So, we engaged wider support by swapping outrage for empathy, showing childhood favourite Lego characters being destroyed by an oil spill.

The result: The partnership ended between Shell and Lego, over 50k petition signatures we received and Greenpeace experienced a 75% new audience engagement rate.

London Creative Agency

It isn’t easy, but that’s why we’re here to help. At Don’t Panic, we don’t just talk the talk – we’re busy walking the walk too. To see our work, click here, or if you’re after an attention-grabbing campaign of your own, click here.

Florence Auckland is engagement strategist and Sophie Heatley is marketing executive at Don't Panic