A business that sells nothing sounds unmarketable. But for charities, this position is something marketing departments have to grapple with every day. When everything goes right, the pressure creates campaigns that tell compelling stories and engage people better than anything else out there. For the right businesses, the lessons learnt here could create new standout campaigns.
However, according to Vicky Browning, director of CharityComms.org (a membership body of communication professionals working in UK charities), selling what charities do is a challenge.
“They’re offering something much less tangible: hope for a better world, expectation of change, solutions to some of society’s most intractable problems. It’s easier to ask people to give their money for something tangible they will receive in return, a basket of supermarket goods for example, than it is to raise money to help change the world for the better.”
Because of this, communication is paramount. “Charities don’t just communicate to tell people about the change they make in the world; they communicate to make change happen”, Browning noted. “This could be by informing beneficiaries of their rights or providing lifesaving information, for example. It could be by building public support for change in policy and practice, or by changing people’s behaviour to bring about positive changes in society.”
In some ways, the only thing that charities can offer in return for a donation is the story of a contribution’s impact. For a person to feel good for longer than it takes for a couple of coins to hit the bottom of a collection tin, they need to find out what those coins actually do.
The most memorable campaigns tell a simple story. AdAge recently completed a list of the top ad campaigns of the 21st century so far, and at number 15 was Unicef’s Tap Project. The strategy highlighted that adding a $1 donation to a restaurant bill could provide a child with drinking water for 40 days. It’s simple, straightforward, and tells donors a story about where their money is going.
In some ways, the only thing that charities can offer in return for a donation is the story of a contribution’s impact
This way of thinking has been there from the earliest advertisements. Oxfam’s first campaign, launched in 1943 to raise money to curb starvation in Nazi-occupied Greece, was a photograph of a young girl accompanied by a short story about how Oxfam had contributed to her life. The ‘Greek Week’ campaign raised £10,700 for the Greek Red Cross, worth over £370,000 if the same amount were raised today.
More recent viral campaigns, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge and the #nomakeupselfie movement, while not offering a story about the impact of donations, encouraged people to write their own. It always ended in a good punch line: either photos of friends without makeup or a bucket of water ending up on someone’s head. While neither of those were started by a marketing department, charities moved fast to include themselves officially.
It’s something other businesses can learn from. Chris Norman is one of the founders of GOOD Agency, a creative agency in Waterloo that has been working with brands for 21 years to create positive change, observed: “We set up the agency in the belief that good is owned by people, not governments, business or charities, and how people demonstrate their values through their behaviour determines the level of good we have in the world. At the simplest level, it is just as valid to choose to buy a brand of soap because a percentage of the proceeds are donated to a water charity as it is to donate to the water charity directly.”
Norman said that charity campaigns succeed with audiences when they stimulate core emotions, reflect values and enrich the audience’s life in some way. “Commercial brands will claim to do the same, but very few have a clearly defined social purpose to authentically claim to share the audience’s values, and very few go beyond transaction in terms of enrichment.”
A strategic alliance between a business and a charity provides solutions for both parties
This is where businesses can stand out among their competitors. Consumers are no longer swayed only by promotions, prices and product attributes, but are interested in connecting to a business’ values. Norman refers to this as ‘social purpose’, and it can be used to differentiate a brand in a crowded market. In the future, Norman predicts charities and businesses will become closer partners.
“We will increasingly see longer term partnerships based on a business helping achieve the charity’s mission beyond just donating a sum of money or getting their staff to volunteer. The partnerships will be more meaningful for staff and customers; a commercial benefit will be an acceptable goal of the relationship for both parties.”
However, Norman warned that charities currently face a perfect storm of challenges: “Falling trust, a future of permission-based relationships, higher expectations of the younger audiences they are trying to attract as their traditional older audience dies off, literally, and commercial brands using ‘good’ to engage people. The loss of trust has been self-inflicted. In their pursuit of funds, many charities have been behaving in a way that is incompatible with their brand values and the values of their supporters. Charities can no longer just rely on their status and heritage to attract supporters, they need to develop an engagement proposition for audiences that are looking for reward and enrichment from their relationship, as well as knowledge that their action will have a positive impact.”
A strategic alliance between a business and a charity provides solutions for both parties. Charities can reach new audiences and offer products that are tangible to contributors, and businesses can latch onto a narrative that resonates with the public. Norman believes this is the start of a golden age for the charity sector.
“In the next few years, we will see charity brands behaving more like lifestyle brands. Health charities will become more relevant to our everyday lives through a prevention strategy; charities will increasingly offer enrichment in the form of education, experience or entertainment, as well as reward in the form of status and a greater sense of purpose. There is a convergence of business and charity around good, and that can only be of benefit to us all.”
The takeaway point for businesses about how charities sell might seem counterintuitive, but it works: the best way to make more money might just be to start giving more away. By creating a reason for a business to exist aside from profit making, companies can speak to people’s values as well as their wallets.