BlueFrog Creative

“You’ve got 135 characters. No, not words. Characters. Oh, that’s including spaces actually. Yep. That’s right. Now, off you go. Really sell it to them.”

Not long ago, I was summoned to Bluefrog’s deepest darkest basement to be briefed on a new job – a job that our lovely studio trafficker Gabriel assured me would, “Only take an hour. If that. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

20 or so minutes later I traipsed back up the stairs to our creative floor. I sat at my desk, scratched my head a few times and thought, “Someone has lied to Gabriel.”

You see, my brief looked a little like this:

Actually I take it back. My brief looked exactly like that!

By now some of you might have copped on to what this brief was actually for. Yep, you guessed it. My journey to the basement had been a visit to my lovely, albeit vitamin-D deficient, digital colleagues.

They wanted me to write Facebook ads.

“Oh God”, I thought. I am about as digitally unaware as anyone under 30 can be. But worst of all, I’d spent the best part of five years in charity fundraising writing long copy letters, feedback pieces, newsletter articles and well... you know... wordy stuff. How could I convince anyone to do anything in 135 characters? Only people who are seasoned Tweeters know how to do that. And sadly, I’m not one of them.

But this was an ‘easy job’ with a couple of hours allocated to it, so I didn’t have time to whinge – I had to get started.

I pscyhed myself up. I reckoned this was what they call ‘real advertising’. A whole other world of writing rules was about to be thrown at me. Less is more and all that jazz. I would channel all my short, snappy lines and SELL. Suddenly, I was starting to feel excited. This job might not be so bad after all...

The client was The Scouts Association. I knew them pretty well given I’d just helped write their new website (take a look at it by clicking here) which was aimed at getting more 16 to 25 year olds to volunteer as Scout leaders. With 32,000 young people wanting to join the Scouts but not enough volunteers, the need was crystal clear. And now, our Facebook ads would hopefully drive lots of people to the site where they could find out more information and sign up. The Scouts needed 160 volunteers, so a target of 300 applications was set.

All we needed now was the copy. Gulp.

So I just wrote one. Quickly. Then another. And another. Then I made a couple permutations of those, and so on and so forth. And let me tell you, it was slightly addictive and also quite fun!

But there were definitely some downsides too. I was surprised to find how quickly 135 characters gets used up. (I almost just did it in those last two sentences...). Plus, it was hard not to go on and on like I usually do. I had to ask desk buddy and art director Tom to move the word count tool to my toolbar. My technical failings meant I couldn’t do it myself.

And so I wrote, rewrote, thought of a more '16-year-old' way of saying it, and then wrote it again. In the end, I took about three pages worth of 135 character ads back down to the basement for design and testing, here’s one they whipped up in no time:

Quite pleased, and surprisingly, having thoroughly enjoyed myself, I thought my job was done. I expected to hear news of whether or not my ads had worked in a few months time, so off I went to do my more usual routine of long letters, etc.

Now, I’ve always liked direct marketing because it’s measurable and you get a sense of achievement from knowing you’ve succeeded in raising the funds, hitting your ROI, or recruiting the desired number of donors. But with Facebook ads you really do get instant gratification.

The digital chaps had some results five days later. “It’s too soon,” I thought. This must mean they were awful. I convinced myself I’d failed miserably, and was ready to be told I was never going to be briefed on another digital job again.

Instead they showed me a snazzy excel type page with lots of stuff on it I didn’t really understand like CTRs (click through rate), imps (impressions) and average CPCs (cost per click). Yet after that quick tutorial, I was sold – this was cool. But I wasn’t the only one. So were a few 16 to 25 year olds, apparently.

Yep, the ads had worked. People had looked, clicked and then actually signed up.

We scrutinized which words were working and which weren’t. We could tell that titles like ‘Fun Work Experience’, and ‘Bored? Volunteer’ were working better than ‘Are You A Leader’ or ‘Kick Start Your Career’. We were able to target specific age groups, genders, lifestyles and networks too. And unlike direct mail, where once it’s gone it really is gone, with these ads we could change them in real time and see whether it was worth it. Fabulous.

But most fabulous of all were the final results. Our ads did the trick. Instead of the 300 applications we thought we’d get, we got closer to 500.  So right now The Scout Association is enjoying the largest yearly increase in adult volunteers for over 20 years – and our little ads (literally) helped them get there.

So next time you have to write a paragraph explaining to a donor why they should give, volunteer or campaign, see if you can do it in 135 characters. If you can, maybe you should give Facebook Ads a try too?

Thanks for listening, 

Joanna Gaunt (Bluefrog Creative Guest Blogger - Aline's on holiday, by the way) 

Oh, and here are some of the other ads we tested.

A post which owes more than I’d like to Mr Ronnie Corbett

When I got home on Friday night, I noticed that the Proms were on television. I can’t say I watched it for long – just long enough for it to prompt me to write this post. Because it reminded me that so much of what we as fundraisers create is entirely visually orientated. And that seems a great shame.

Because exceptions are always interesting.

One exception I’ve come across in a slightly different area is the novel ‘An Equal Music’ by Vikram Seth (more famous for writing ‘A Suitable Boy’). If you’ve read it, you’ll know that it’s (principally) about two musicians and the music that brings them together and (now I’m ruining it for you) drives them apart.

Now I think I’ve got a decent(ish) imagination. In fact, I’ll admit to having an overactive imagination. If you describe a beautiful seascape for me, I’ll see it and I’ll want to be there. If you tell me about a murderer stalking the streets, I’ll be fairly sure he/she is directly behind me. And if you go into the details of an accident or an operation you’ve had, I won’t hang around for long.

But no matter how beautifully someone writes about Schubert’s ‘The Trout’ or Bach’s ‘The Art of Fugue’, I’m afraid it won’t mean much to me unless I hear it. Thankfully Vikram Seth appreciated this. So when you buy the book, you can buy the CD too.

Now at this point, I was going to tell you about a body of work we’ve done for one of our clients over the last eight or nine years which, in the terms set out above, certainly qualifies as exceptional.

It’s for Sense, the charity that works with deaf and blind children. And it’s amongst the work I’m proudest to have been a part of.

But first, by means of an important digression, I just want to deal with the can of worms I inadvertently opened up when talking about imagination. I’ll do it as quickly as I can.

•  ‘Imagine’ is the most over-used word in advertising. Don’t use it. Derek Humphries sums it up beautifully here.

•  Good copy can transport someone to a place they’ve never been. It can make them stand in the shoes or barefeet of someone who lives an entirely different life. But there are exceptions – as Vikram Seth found. It’s very difficult to ask someone to imagine a piece of music they’ve never heard. 

•   I’d also argue it’s entirely inappropriate to ask them to imagine how it feels like to have had nothing to eat for three days, to have been abused by a parent or to…  (you can add other examples relating to your cause). Of course, you can ask them to relate to the emotions of feeling lonely, abandoned, frightened, confused etc. 

• There are many ways of enabling a supporter to understand the position of the person you want them to help, but asking them to ‘imagine it’ isn’t one I’d recommend.

 Which leads me back to Sense.

When we first pitched for the account almost ten years ago now, we carried out some research, which delivered disturbing findings. When asked about the cause, many people spoke of the hopelessness they felt for a child who was deaf and blind. Worse still, some spoke of their lives not being worth living (except they didn’t say in nearly such a diplomatic way).

What a difficult cause this is going to be to fundraise for we thought – briefly. Until we realised that what people were imagining when we used the term deaf and blind was a child living in absolute silence and absolute darkness, entirely cut off from everyone and everything around them.

And having worked at RNID, I knew that absolute deafness was very rare. So from that point onwards, we understood that we had to show how Sense would help a child use their sight and hearing (however limited) and all their other senses to engage with the world around them.

That eventually resulted in these lovely, colourful, tactile packs that aren’t just about what you can see, but what you can hear, touch, smell etc. 

I've picked out a few examples, but there are many more. And a big thank you goes to the many people who had a hand in producing them.

The packs work because they were inspired by a great cause and by families who allowed us into their homes to see how they interacted with their child. What we saw, we turned into pieces that engaged the donor in using all their senses too. We helped the donors to understand the world of deafblindness rather than leaving them to imagine it as a bleak and hopeless condition. 

TOUCH This is last year's Christmas pack. It included a small ball of cotton wool which the donor could use to make Father Christmas's beard on a card which a deaf and blind child would enjoy too.

HEARING This pack contained an envelope full of beans that you could rattle, just as a deaf and blind child might use a sensory toy (see below).

 

SIGHT This one is an old Christmas pack, which we did after visiting a family that made toys for their deaf and blind child using shiny paper because it perfectly captured the kind of light that enabled him to use his very limited vision.

The silver paper below showed through the die-cut angel dresses in the envelope above. The donor could make their own decorations.

Via rather a lengthy route round the houses, I think that's covered the points I wanted to make when I started. Thanks for being patient.

(And for those of you unfamiliar with Mr Ronnie Corbett, he is known for his rather rambling story-telling style.)

“Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colours.”

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.

 

While reading this, please have a sandwich, listen to some music and have a chat to a friend.

One Saturday recently, I found myself being stressed out by a doctor. (I owe this fun-packed weekend to finding it difficult to refuse when someone asks me a favour.)

I was given a lengthy IQ test and 20 minutes to complete it. As I raced to answer the questions, two different heavy metal albums were delivered simultaneously into my left and right ears at high volume through a set of headphones. My blood pressure was monitored throughout.

I must admit I was disappointed. I’d hoped that they’d at least ask me to answer the phone at the same time.

Loud music? Work you have to concentrate on? Deadlines? Telephone calls? I work in an office. Of course, I can handle all those tasks at the same time.

You too? Well this post is about multi-tasking. Not the usual debate as to whether you can do it – but whether you should do it.

Because for all my foolish bravado, the stress test gave me a cracking headache. And unaccountably, I found all the maths questions easy and many of the word-based ones difficult. Distinctly uncool in my line of work.

Just yesterday, I had cause to think of that stress test again. I was cycling home behind a man who’d thought it a good idea to ride his bike and conduct a phone conversation at the same time. Unlike my stress test, he was combining two very simple activities that really don’t take much thought. Riding a bike is, after all, as easy as…Nevertheless he was making a real hash of it. And as he wobbled from side to side, he cemented my view that multi-tasking isn’t so much something to take pride in, but to avoid.

One person who agrees is Jon Steel, co-creator of the ‘Got Milk’ campaign. In his book ‘Perfect Pitch’, he describes running over his BlackBerry with his car. When this failed to destroy it, he took a sledgehammer to it. Drastic measures perhaps, but this is how he justified it.

‘The day my BlackBerry died was a good day not only for me but also for my employer. In the months that have passed since its demise, I can confidently report that my productivity has been improved, my levels of creativity enhanced and, as if that weren’t enough, some people have suggested that I might have become a nicer person.”

He goes on. ‘“Always on” technology like a BlackBerry, mobile phone or computer means that we are distracted when we should be concentrating on what we are paid to do, and even when the machine is not actually interrupting us, our minds are constantly ready for it to do so and cannot focus on the task in hand.’

Don’t worry, the irony of blogging on this subject and discussing it via Twitter hasn’t escaped me. In fact, I’ve had fun imagining what Jon Steel would make of Twitter. To me, it’s a fantastic way of sharing information and getting in touch with people, but it certainly falls into the category of a terrible distraction.

So it poses us with a challenge – to get the best out of ‘connecting technology’, whilst also finding sufficient headspace to do some real thinking. What to do?

I like the way Jon Steel puts it.

“It means taking a stand against other people who believe speed is a more important quality than intelligence; it means sometimes disappointing them in the short term in the interests of longer-term satisfaction; it means really taking control (as opposed to the illusion of control offered by the BlackBerry) of your own life.”

On a more practical level, I’ve found it means really planning how you use your time. 

·      So is there a task you have to do this week that needs your undivided attention?

·      Can you organize your time so you can take a few hours away from 24/7 distractions?

·      Do you get better work as a result?

·      Could you actually save time by doing tasks consecutively rather than concurrently?

Right, I’m starting with a brave attempt to tear myself away from the ball-by-ball commentary. Will banish the thought that I might miss something and instead do something. If you’d like to do the same, but need to wean yourself off more gently, take a look at this lovely Economist site where inspiring people invite you into their thinking space http://thinkingspace.economist.com/ 

For this post, I’d like you to think about the relationship you have with a good friend.

My closest friend is called Charlotte.

Charlotte and I have been friends for seventeen years. Like any friend, she and I keep in touch regularly. At it happens, neither of us much likes the phone. So we text at length, send each other e-mails, tweets and facebook messages. And of course we see each other – though not nearly often enough.

(Please bear with me. There is a reason to share this.)

Every now and again, Charlotte and I will have a laugh/shared squirm about things we have done together in the past. Like being asked to stop dancing in a club in Leeds because apparently we were making people laugh too much. She would find it immensely puzzling if I forgot important information like that. In fact, she’d probably be rather cross and, if I persisted, choose to spend time with her other (inferior) friends.

I’m sure your friendships are held together by the same glue – made from shared experiences, a love of each other’s quirks and care with how you treat each other.

Which brings me to the subject of today’s post – ‘ultra personalisation’. For the uninitiated, ultra personalisation in direct mail means you can play back key information to the donor, which you may have recorded on your database or kept alongside it. Done well, it can increase response to an appeal by as much as 30%.

How?

Well ultra-personalisation brings a little of the glue I mentioned earlier to your relationship with your donor. Rather than write to them as one of a group of people who gave between £9.99-£19.99 to your last mailing, you can talk to them as an individual who has done particular things that you appreciate.

A data specialist can identify what kind of personal detail you can share, but basics are things like: 

• Date of first gift (therefore how long a donor has been supporting you).
• How and where they were first recruited.
• The types of gifts they have given you over the years.
• The amount of their last gift and the subject matter of the appeal they gave to.
• The themes of the appeals they respond to.
• The donor’s preferred communication channel (remember Charlotte’s preference for texts etc.)

Ultra-personalisation can also allow you to make relevant comparisons. For example, you might tell a donor about the distance an injured horse had to walk for treatment in a way that’s most meaningful to him/her – by comparing it to the distance from his/her house to the nearest town.

But here’s the thing. Ultra-personalised copy needs to be written with very great care for two reasons. 

1. Done badly, it can sound like you’re reeling off dates and numbers for no reason. Just to show off.
2. It gets complicated. See below. 

So to finish, let’s have a look at how we’d handle just one piece of ultra-personalisation – length of support.

Going back to my friend Charlotte, we’d almost never refer to how long we’ve been friends – unless there was a reason. To avoid mistake number 1, a good copywriter will include a reason for personalising. But to cover all the possible answers, you need to write several different versions.

For donors who have been giving for 2 months-4 years: “It’s coming up to our 25^th anniversary and there’s no doubt that you have been a big part of the recent growth of our work. Yes, it’s now <x months/a whole year-4 years> since you have been giving us your generous support.”

For donors who have been giving for 5-24 years: “It’s coming up to our 25^th anniversary and I was thinking how amazing it is that you have been there for <5-24> of those years”.

For donors who have been giving for 25 years: “It’s coming up to our 25^th anniversary and I was thinking how amazing it is that you have been there for every single one of those years – giving your support”.

For donors who you don’t have information for: “It’s coming up to our 25^th anniversary and I was thinking we’d never have got here without you”.

Length of support is just one small detail you can personalise. One small way you can show you know and appreciate your donor. But you can already see that it needs some care to get it right for each of the people you write to. And the greater the personalisation, the more complicated it gets.

So if you’re thinking of doing it yourself, I’d advise some caution – as well as making absolutely sure that your data is correct.

Remember, if you get it wrong or don’t do it, there are plenty of other charities who do this already. So just like Charlotte’s friendship, you could jeopardise the relationship you have with your donors by not recognising how important they are to you.

If you’d like to know more (and an instant uplift to your results), get in touch. That's it for today.