Do you have a specific goal you're trying to achieve? Perhaps you don't know where to start or how awareness building works, but you know that what your staff is working on is something special, big and could get others excited about your work too. Sounds you may need a campaign to build momentum, spread the word and get your organization united toward achieving your goal!

 

Effective campaigns require collabortaion and integration across your entire organizataion. Your teams in marketing, communications, social media and media relations all need to be targeting the same audiences with the same messages. What should that message be? That's where PR comes in to help focus on the purpose of your goal, strategize what your campaign says and does, and then develop public relations strategies to help achieve your goal.

 

I've spent several years strategizing campaigns including TED Talk 2015, World Vision's Gift Catalog,

30 Hour Famine, Experience Tour, U.S. Programs Back-to-School, and disaster response.  My strategy is to start with an organization's branding (what you say, how you look) during a campaign. For example, World Vision's Gift Catalog featured 250 unique Christmas gifts including cows, chickens, sheep, etc. However, the #1 most popular item sold each year was the Goat. In 2012, I team led a campaign inititiave around the theme "Christmas Got Your Goat?" We conducted an annual survey tracking giving trends, developed an infrographic, offered media outlets live interviews with staff and goats, and promoted press releases locally and nationally around the goat.  In addition, our media team joined a national movement, "Giving Tuesday". The Tuesday after Black Friday (the busiest shopping day of the year), our media team offered virtual giving of the goat as a way of contributing to the volunteerism movment and also integrating the World Vision branding. The result? A significant increase in media placements by 60% from the year before, a jump in fundraising by 42% on Giving Tuesday, and a successful multi-million dollar campaign.

 

Campaigns can be small or large but they are effective tools for building momentum and reaching your organizational fundraising goals!