Future Fundraising Now

Cart-before-horse fundraising on social media

Have you met this guy?

Marketoonist.

Yes, you have met him. He really wants some of your money.

You don't have to give him any.

Stupid kids -- get offa my marketing!

If you make an ad for beer, chances are you're not going to show a whole lot of beer. After all:

• All beer looks about the same, and it doesn't look interesting.
• All beer tastes pretty much the same.
• All beer has roughly the same affect on you.

So beer ads tend to be abstract and indirect. It's babes, sports, and jokes, not beer.

You don't have to do that if what you're pushing is saving the lives of kids who have cancer. Being straightforward and literal covers it for you with emotion and depth.

But not according to an ad agency that recently did some work for the Dutch cancer charity KIKA (Kinderen Kanker Vrij, or Children Cancer Free). They took the beer-ad approach of pushing something other than the issue at hand.

Check out this print ad:

No kids. No humans at all. No cancer, no need, no tragedy, no triumph.

Just a mild joke. I chuckled a little, once I figured it out.

Helping kids in need is one of the most potent motivators in existence. If your cause has anything to do with helping children, you are automatically several steps ahead of everyone else in the race to influence donors.

Helping children is not anything like selling beer.

So if an ad agency comes to you with a bold plan to replace children with a joke, or some wordplay, or an abstraction, or symbolism -- tell them no thanks. No matter how sophisticated and clever they make it sound.

Thanks to Osocio for the tip. You can also find other examples of the campaign there.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

How your fundraising comes out upside-down

The dependably funny Brewster Rockit comic strip.

Are you looking at your communications from your point of view? If you are, you're probably getting it wrong for your donors!

World's shortest stupid nonprofit ad

This will probably be annoying. Pardon the mess. If you want to see this stupid nonprofit ad for the OC Foundation, you're going to have to click it over and over and over again.

Of course, it's that way on purpose. You see, it's a concept, one of those almost-brilliant, yet incredibly stupid ideas that's somehow supposed to bring crowds of supporters to a nonprofit.

Good luck with that. Here you go. If you have some time on your hands:

(Or see it here on YouTube.)

Yes. it's a frustrating experience, so I'll save you the trouble. The video is a text screen that says:

For some people, Performing simple actions repeatedly is an everyday matter.

But this is just one of the issues people with obsessive compulsive disorder have to deal with.

Get more familiar with OCD at www.ocfoundation.org

Get it? The idea is that you have to click it over and over. Sort of the way people with OCD are compelled to do things over and over. Of course, you had to do it because of a stupid concept. You could stop as soon as you got fed up. Someone with OCD is compelled to repeated their actions, and they can't just stop. Your multi-clicking experience is nothing like theirs. In fact, you've just minimized their experience, and likely have less understanding and empathy than before.

Why this is supposed to make viewers into supporters of the OC Foundation is beyond me. Especially with a call to action like Get more familiar with OCD. Get more familiar?

(I should note that to their credit, the Foundation apparently has nothing to do with this project.)

There are clues to what the point of all this is at a short, self-congratulatory video about the project by the makers. It notes that:

With a 0$ budget (literally), we were able to pass the experience on to tens of thousands of viewers

And achieved a massive online coverage.

Well, maybe not so much. When I viewed it, the YouTube views count less than 100,000 viewers. Of course, that's coming from viewers who may have watched it 5, 10, or more times in their effort to see what it was about. And that "massive online coverage"? The websites shown are all ad-industry sites. Not normal people spreading word-of-mouth about something that matters to them, but fanboys talking about a cool ad concept. (The fanboys love this one.)

It's not easy to help people understand an illness they don't have. It's even harder to move them from understanding to caring to taking action.

But here's a hint for anyone facing this challenge: Clever abstraction don't get you there. Real stories of human realities are the path to follow.

Thanks to Osocio for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Stupid but harmless assault on graffiti

No nonprofit organizations were harmed in the production of these Stupid Nonprofit Ads. It's a step in the right direction.

The lack of harm isn't because of a lack of stupidity. It's because the organization the ads are for, Americans for Grammar doesn't actually exist.

Inept marketing for a non-existent organization? Sounds pretty Zen to me.

(More information, and another, similar ad at Ads of the World

The posting of these ads at Ads of the World is accompanied by a rambling statement:

The objective of this project was to create a movement for all Americans to stand up and take control of (and call out) a growing problem: Poor grammar.... The print ads drive to a blog where people can post their own found mis-tags, as well as donate money to an urban language and grammar school.

Except you can't post your own examples of bad-grammar graffiti, and you can't donate to anything. There's just a blog that has five posts, all of them from the same day last November. There's no indication who's behind it and no other action you can take no matter how hard you search.

If there were an organization called Americans for Grammar, I think they'd know the difference between grammar and spelling. And I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be focused on incorrect graffiti as the problem that needs solving.

It's another clever, strange, misdirected stupid nonprofit ad. But this time, no harm has been done.

It's probably a desperate attempt by struggling agency employees to create full-looking portfolios. If you go to the ad blogs where these ads are posted, you'll see an echo-chamber of people in the comments who think these ads are just awesome. The Ads of the World post credits Y&R Chicago as the agency. It also credits a Chief Creative Officer, Copywriter and Art Director (both of whom are also Associate Creative Directors), and a Director of Innovation(?).

Maybe things aren't going well at Y&R. Most ad agencies are extremely busy places, with over-the-top workloads to keep up with real, paying clients. So they make up fake clients to work on.

But why complain? No money, time, opportunity, or reputation was squandered by any good cause. If we could get the agency hacks who love creating stupid nonprofit ads to keep them to imaginary nonprofits, that would be wonderful!

Thanks to Osocio for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Fundraisers and social media - INFOGRAPHIC

What your agency thinks it's doing

Stupid ads succeed in stroking egos while avoiding response

If you create a stupid nonprofit ad and The New York Times runs an article about it before it ever appears in real life, you can probably declare victory, and get off scot-free despite the lack of fundraising that's going to happen.

But that doesn't mean it isn't a shockingly stupid waste of time, money, and opportunity.

Like this howler of a campaign for Action Against Hunger. The Times article is here: Antihunger Campaign Forgoes Images of Starving Children. An article in the Times is a lot of publicity.

Here's one of the two ads that make up the campaign:

The second ad shows an open pizza box with an Oreo-sized pizza in it. The copy: "Hungry? Imagine living on only a tiny fraction of what you eat each day. Every year, 3.5 million children try -- and don't survive. You can help prevent this."

Both ads include the logo of Ultimat Vodka, which is donating around $400,000 worth space for the ads in Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Saveur, Wine Enthusiast, and The New York Times Magazine.

I'm not troubled by the presence of a Vodka company in a hunger ad, and I doubt it would trouble very many donors, either.

Anyway, there aren't going to be many donors to worry about. Because the ads make several serious rookie mistakes:

• Big numbers. The fact that 3.5 million children die each year is not going to motivate giving. It's going to turn away giving. People give to help solve human-sized, solvable problems.
  
• Jargon. Guess what? Most people don't know what "acute malnutrition" is. It's a medical term with little emotional punch or life connection.
• Abstract imagery. If you want people to donate to help people, you're going to have to show images of people. Not paper dolls; not miniature pizzas. Donors don't have time to play your mind games. Just show them what needs to be done. (The creative director at the clueless agency that created the ads explained it with the creative directors' Trump Card: "cognitive dissonance." Sorry, cognitive dissonance is a code phrase for "no response.")
• No coupon. Even a first-year junior copywriter in fundraising who's barely sober most of the time knows that if you want response, you've got to include a coupon. Even though most responses now come via the web or the phone. (Oops! They forgot to include a phone number!)

Beyond all that, here's more news for you: Print advertising is not a very good way to reach donors. Even without all those rookie mistakes, it's unlikely to work. Print is still viable in very special circumstances, such as during disasters. Also, it can work in very low-cost publications, such as small-town newspapers. Certainly not the high-end publications they're going to be in.

Of course, the ad placements are covered by the vodka company, and they probably wouldn't be interested in the paying for a standard old ugly direct-response ad.

This whole project appears to be a big circle of ego-stroking on the part of the charity, the ad agency, and the vodka company. And for that purpose, it's very successful. It became so the moment a New York Times reporter picked up the scent.

But it's still an incredibly stupid nonprofit ad.

(Nancy Schwartz has a detailed and excellent critique of the ads here.)

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

Stupid ad displays stillborn creative concept

It's shocking, a crime against all morality, that preteen kids are forced to fight as soldiers in some parts of the world. I doubt it's difficult to persuade others of that. The hard part, I think, would be getting Westerners to believe it's really happening.

So if you're working for Amnesty International or any of the other organizations working to address the child-soldier issue, you probably put a lot of thought into making this unbelievable outrage believable.

This stupid nonprofit ad, on the other hand, took the exact opposite approach. Make the issue seem less real! What if infants in the womb were already child soldiers?

Here's what you get:

As usual with stupid nonprofit ads, the copy is microscopic. Here's what it says:

Thousands of unborn children in South America are predestined to become child soldiers. Contribute to make a difference at www.amnesty.org

Following the common MO of stupid advertisers, this one attempts to create a symbolic representation of a real thing. Real photos of real child soldiers are shocking.

But apparently, someone thought obvious fake mock-ups of ultrasound captures would be more persuasive. I'm guessing "shock value" is what it goes for. Thing is, it's not shocking. It's just strange.

Then there's the utter falsity of the ad's claim: The fact is, no child is "predestined" to become a child soldier. If they were, there'd hardly be any point trying to fight it. But children become child soldiers because of poverty, injustice, the actions of evil men, and the inaction of others.

They aren't born that way. Each one could be prevented, and every one can be rescued. If we take sufficient action.

Why would anyone create a message that undermines that truth?

As near as I can tell, no part of Amnesty International has any official connection with this campaign -- to their credit. It's apparently freelance, portfolio-padding, navel-gazing, award-trolling stupidity. No real harm done.

Except this: The creator of this stupid nonprofit ad may someday get real work from a real nonprofit. And, following the abstraction-at-all-costs formula, put another stupid nonprofit ad out there, this time at cost to an organization that needs and deserves smart work.

Just make sure it doesn't happen to you!

Thanks to Creative Advertisements for NGO for the tip.

More Stupid Nonprofit Ads.

A fundraising offer you can't refuse

From the travel blog Asia Obscura, an example of extreme fundraising from southern India: Sweet Gruesome Statue (aka "Give Cash Now").

How many donors would say no to that fundraising offer?

I also wonder if the agency submitted the project with more entrails, but the client made them hold back with only a moderate display of entrails.

Thanks to alert reader (and fellow podcaster) Steven Screen for the tip.