If you’re looking for a creative way to build your email list, you might want to give download cards a try.
A while back I was having a coffee at my neighbourhood corpobucks, where they always have a stack of these iTunes download cards, which offer a free “song of the day.”
After giving it a whirl and downloading a track, I immediately had two thoughts:
These cards could be a great opportunity to have people opt-in to an email marketing campaign.
I can do so much better than one lonesome song.
So I started contacting reps for every artist performing at this year’s Saskatchewan Jazz Festival. Before long I had nearly 30 artists who freely gave permission for one of their songs to be used on a download card to promote the festival.
With 4.5 million views and counting, the Pink Glove Dance is the result of a idea simple enough — and fun enough — that even busy hospital staff could take part in the project. And if they can do it, you can do it.
My ambivalence about the Pink Ribbon industry notwithstanding, the video works. It works not because it’s particularly brilliant, or features inspired cinematography. The Pink Glove Dance works because it’s authentic and it makes us smile.
On top of its stated goal of raising breast cancer awareness, the video is a great marketing piece for the hospital, the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. The video gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility, and the images of cleaning staff, cooks, lab techs and receptionists getting their groove on reminds us that health care relies upon far more than than doctors and nurses.
Now if a serious, bureaucratic hospital can put together a silly video drawing attention to their cause, so can you. Grab a camera, brainstorm an idea or two, and start rolling!
YouTube is chock full of spoof ads, most of them awful. This morning I watched one that was surprisingly well made, if not particularly clever. The ad was a Toronto Maple Leafs-themed spoof on another Hogtown creation, the award-winning Dove Evolution video that drew attention to the deceptive beauty of the fashion industry.
Around the same time I was catching up on the Ralph Lauren photoshop scandal — what a sick yet well-deserved mess that has become. My morning browsing eventually got me thinking: how am I lying to my audience?
Now, I don’t believe I’ve pumped plus-sized shams out of my MacBook. But let’s not deceive ourselves. Even in the nonprofit world, we are susceptible to acts of exaggeration.
So join me and take this opportunity to review your marketing materials and see what information might be a tad doctored, touched up, or based on truthiness. I hope you’re not telling any whoppers, but don’t be surprised to discover inflated statistics, overstated challenges, or a touch of hyperbole.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, they say. We’ve all heard this advice before. But should we listen?
Flickr photo by robertpaulyoung.
The problem is, the Small Stuff can make or break your organization. Paying attention to the Small Stuff shows that you take your cause seriously. The Small Stuff shows that you care. And if you don’t care deeply enough about your cause to Sweat the Small Stuff, why should anyone else?
In an age when the public attention span is short—and their purse strings even shorter—you can’t afford to neglect any detail, no matter how small it may seem. Each touchpoint with your audience needs to reflect your brand and communicate your passion to your cause.
Is your copy ever sloppy? Do you always respond to comments on your Facebook page? Is it hard to unsubscribe from your newsletter? Have you tweaked your landing pages?
These rough edges that can distract from your message and represent a lost opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your audience. We can’t always be perfect, but we should strive for consistency.
During Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope, a @globeandmail article called him a "tyrannical brother" and said he ran only because of a grudge. Ha!about 1 day agofrom HootSuite
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