Eagle-eyed readers of this blog will notice that I am employing
the ‘Felix’ today. (If you’re unfamiliar with this technique, you can catch up
by paging down to the final post here). So I owe a debt of thanks to Rhys Alexander for saying exactly what I wanted to say, several years before me.
And I’d like to follow her words with a confession. I love detail. I love detail in much the same way I love fig rolls. Fig rolls are a neglected pleasure (albeit a slightly dry one). So is attention to detail.
Instead, it’s usually the ‘big idea’ that gets lauded and sometimes I can't help feeling ‘big ideas’ are over-exposed. And shouty. And flashy.
Behind the scenes, it’s the hard-working details that determine whether that initial big idea becomes a success. And I think that applies whether you’re writing a pack, an email, creating a website, organising an event – anything really.
But let’s go through an example – chosen because it’s a cold pack that beat the control in an incredibly difficult time financially. And although it was created to an exceptionally tight budget, it has a few nice details. So hopefully useful to you to look at how and why it works.
The beginning
A winning pack starts with inspiration. And in this case, that came from the fantastic staff at Barnardo’s project with young people who are ‘sexually exploited’. @markyphillips and I spent a few hours visiting the centre and asking questions. We were looking for the things that would excite donors. And when I say ‘things’, I mean ‘details’. There were loads.
Here, for example, is a detail that helps you understand what ‘sexual exploitation’ really means. Several of the young girls at the project had met their much older ‘boyfriend’ in the following way. The men had been waiting outside their care home in a flashy car. That’s how they identify the most vulnerable girls (they are in care) – and a flashy car is enough to attract them. Awful.
It’s because these girls have never known real love (not even from mum and dad) that they easily fall into ‘relationships’ that are immensely damaging. Their ‘boyfriends’ introduce them to drugs, pimp them out, give them STDs and unwanted pregnancies. I could go on.
But here’s another detail that moved me.
Whenever it was a girl’s birthday, the staff would club together to get a card and a cake. For many girls, it was the first time in their lives that anyone had done anything to celebrate their birthday.
And another.
Because the girls had so little, the staff would buy multi-packs of soap, shampoo etc and create ‘survival kits’ of supplies. They’d even add in donated clothes.
Needless to say, all these and more went into creating the pack. Because a good project visit is about details - finding the ones that show how amazing the work is.
The pack
The pack itself was made to look like it came direct from the project (as all the information had). It asked the prospective donor to give £15 to buy a kit of essential supplies of a girl at the project. And it asked them to write them a greetings card wishing them good luck.
This is what it looked like.
But here are some of the details I like most in no particular order. (Apologies if the formatting is awry - Typepad hasn't liked what I've tried to do here).
Card: Lightweight and low cost, the card invites the donor to share a few kind words. I like the back best. A small touch that shows the donor what their support means.
Outer envelope: this envelope wears its green credentials very clearly. It was one of our charitybloggers, Red Cookie, who told us how irritating it was to rip out the windows of letters because they couldn’t be recycled. But they can…
Letter: blue signature, underlining and annotation make the pack feel more personal and like someone has put some effort into producing it (Page down to the second post on this page to read why this is important). There’s also a picture of the gift you could buy a child (I wanted it on the front).
Donation form: Repeating the image of the card here underlines that the request to send back the card is not a gimmick, but something that is actually used. Oh and A4 donation forms are worth the extra expenditure because of the higher response.
Donation form back: It’s perhaps the nature of this disturbing issue that means there’s a great deal of jargon used by social workers. This is a photocopy taken directly from a handout we got at the project. It explains how a child is ‘groomed’ for ‘exploitation’, but the hand-written notes break down the jargon to communicate how a child actually feels. We don’t over-simplify – we enable the donor to explore the complexities of this type of sexual abuse.
And now to the most important details of all.
This pack beat Barnardo’s long-standing control pack – doubling the response rate against the charity's long standing survey control pack. It also beat the campaign targets with a 14% increase in average gift and income. Funnily enough, I got it through my letterbox again yesterday morning so I'll let you know how it gets on second time around.
I didn't get round to talking about the copy much, but what Rhys Alexander says is absolutely true. It's the real details - the things you'd never even think to make up - that make copy good to read. More on that another time.
That's it for now.
