Irish charities are leading the pack when it comes to organisations using social media, with over 90% having an online presence.
A survey recently conducted by The Wheel asked 178 charity organisations about their online habits as part of the Better Together campaign, which aims to let community and voluntary groups showcase their work by posting videos on their website.
Here’s some of the encouraging statistics to come out of the survey:
81 % have a presence on Facebook
43 % are tweeting regularly
31 % use YouTube
29 % are on Linkedin
23 % have upwards of 1,000 followers.
6.2 % have more than 5,000 followers
72 % say social media has had a positive impact on their relationship with stakeholders.
Clearly charities are seeing the benefit that social media can have for organisations in creating awareness and support. The Better Together campaign are running an online video competition running at the moment where visitors can vote for their favourite video with the winner receiving a €10,000 donation. Click here to vote.
Did you know there are 16 million colours that can be displayed on a smartphone screen?
OwnAColour.com is a great little site based on that idea.
Launched by Dulux and Unicef last week, it allows visitors to buy one of these colours for as little as £1 (or as much as you like), with all proceeds going towards Unicef and their ’save a child’s life’ campaign.
You can browse the colours to find the exact match of your favourite one, then name it and leave a description, too.
It’s a beautiful site, not for the colours alone but also for the design and concept.
Have you seen any cut and bruised celebrities in the news lately? Well you’re about to, thanks to a new four-week campaign by the ISPCC.
Their latest poster campaign launched last week and features a series of Irish celebrities depicted with wounds to their faces, in an effort to raise awareness of mental and physical bullying of children.
Louis Walsh, Jedward, actress Saoirse Ronan and MTV presenter Laura Whitmore are among the faces of the campaign and are also acting as ambassadors for the charity for its duration. Westlife member Mark Feehily, who is also an ambassador, is said to have developed the concept.
The celebrities involved were chosen, not only for their current popularity, but also because they have each suffered at the hands of bullies during their childhood. The images are paired with such slogans as ‘Imagine if every child went to sleep without fearing what the next day would bring’.
At present the ISPCC are receiving 2,300 calls per day, many of which relate to both mental and physical bullying and the consequences they produce, and have seen a huge increase in calls since the campaign launched.
Mediacontact.ie travelled to Cork last month to visit Fota Wildlife Park. We weren’t just there to see the animals, however – we spoke to Stephen Ryan, Head of Marketing, about their award-winning use of social media and how they use it to promote the park.
Opened in 1983, the park is a joint project between the Zoological Society of Ireland and University College Cork. They are a non-profit organisation and registered charity so PR has always been an integral part of their work.
Stephen gave us a great insight into how they developed their interactive website and how they use it and social media to communicate with their target audience. Watch the video below, and check them out on Facebook and Twitter too.
Oxfam Ireland recently launched its biggest ever emergency appeal for those affected by the catastrophic drought in East Africa. Over 12 million people are facing starvation in the region, so ease and accessibility to donate is crucial to securing new funds.
This is the first appeal that Oxfam Ireland has used online advertising for, and the results of the campaign so far have highlighted a significant shift towards donating through online platforms.
The charity has created a Facebook app where users can donate, with the message that they’ve just donated appearing on both Oxfam’s and their own pages. They’ve also taken to Twitter to spread the word about the appeal, and are fast approaching 3,000 followers already.
Digital communications, they say, offers charities huge opportunities to engage directly with their constituents. As the costs of m-commerce reduce it will prove a fantastic platform for charities as it is an immediate and compelling method of engaging donors and successfully raising funds.
To donate to Oxfam Ireland’s East Africa appeal, visit:
The RSPCA along with Nixon McInnes have created a great campaign around the new voluntary code of practice for the labelling of pork and pork products. They wanted to find a new way to provide families and young urban professionals with welfare information and shopping advice. The objectives were to increase consumer awareness of the welfare issues for farmed pigs, and educate consumers about labels that point to higher welfare.
It all sounds fairly conventional so far, but the approach taken was anything but. Having originally intended to create a blog, they soon abandoned that idea and developed an interactive Facebook game on the theme of pig welfare instead. Players make words by moving pigs with letters on their backs into the slots on the top of the screen. Fun pig facts also help players learn to learn more about the animals and their welfare. The game was paired with a Facebook page dedicated to the campaign as well as advertisements and a ‘twibbon’ campaign.
Within two months the game had been played by 5,684 people and the campaign page had gained 1,601 ‘likes’. As intended, the game acted as a stepping stone to the real welfare message as 2,543 click-throughs to the page came from the game. It’s even more proof that social media is an excellent way of engaging with your target audience and getting your message out there.
Nelson Mandela has joined the twittersphere, thanks to online consultant Richard Millington handing over the @nelsonmandela account.
Millington is founder of Feverbee, an online community consultancy, and registered the account ‘as part of a debate with a friend about owning your own twitter names’ some time ago. Having never used the account, he forgot about its existence until contacted by the Nelson Mandela foundation recently about taking over the page.
The story has since been covered by over 45 media outlets after he tweeted “The Nelson Mandela foundation just thanked me for handing over the @nelsonmandela twitter account. I forgot I had it.” He’s now suggesting a photo shoot with himself Mandela tweeting side by side in South Africa.
The Foundation has so far used the account to publish key dates in Mandela’s life, inlcuding “#KeyDates 18 April 1986 Nelson Mandela watches the film ‘Missing’ in Pollsmoor Prison”.
Irish Charity Bee for Battens released a video last week to raise awareness of Batten’s Disease, a fatal disorder affecting young children.
The charity is hoping to reach one million views by the end of the month to wish two-year-old Liam Heffernan luck as he undergoes potentially life-saving treatment in New York. The video is also a tribute to Liam’s sister Sorcha, who passed away earlier this year aged five.
The video was shot and edited by Albert Hooi, with illustration and animation by Mick Minogue and music by Lisa Hannigan.
Please watch and share to support this very worthy cause.
Concern Worldwide is launching a new marketing campaign to revamp its 24-hour Fast event as a music festival. ‘It’s the Fast That Thinks It’s a Festival’ was advertising agency Atomic’s pitch when asked to create ideas for Concern’s campaign.
The Concern festival will involve 24 hours of fundraising and fasting to help raise e1 million for malnourished children.
There will be gigs and events taking place around the country. Fasters will be able to attend for free, and friends will be asked to make a donation to Concern. The Concern Festival will be launched at the end of this month.
(Source: thepost.ie)
Apart from the voiceover, this is a great piece of Augmented Reality for WWF aimed at raising awareness around the plight of the Siberian tiger, created by Leo Burnett Moscow.
WWF printed thousands of tiger t-shirts and distributed them online and to key stores in Moscow featuring specially placed AR video mirrors that would instantly activate the AR experience the moment a tiger t-shirt was detected. And at that moment, the experience became quite graphic to anyone wearing the shirt, complete with bullet wounds, huge amounts of blood and sound effects to match. This is a great example of AR melting seamlessly into campaigns:
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