WHAT (THE HECK) CAN FUNDRAISERS LEARN FROM RAPPERS?

7TH JULY 2014

WORD!(ER… HELLO!)

INTRODUCING MC KONTENT & DJ STRAT-2G

Rob MosleyFounder & Creative Director

Nonsense

@RobNonsense

James BarkerDigital Development Manager Elton John AIDS Foundation

@JamesBarker82

(sorry James!)

NONSENSE ARE A CREATIVE DIGITAL AGENCY THAT CONNECTS BRANDS TO THEIR AUDIENCE THROUGH CONTENT WORTH SHARING

Brands that act like publishing houses and tell compelling stories will succeed.

Not all stories deserve telling.Brands need to focus on the ones that do.

Engagement with these stories is not measured in eyeballs or passive ‘likes’. It’s measured in action, and there’s no greater digital action than sharing.

JAMES’ ROLE AT CONCERN

Advise & facilitate digital projects in the UK

Fundraising,

Communications, Campaigns

Lead the UK Digital Strategy

Increase Awareness,

Participation and Income

Concern is tackling hunger and transforming life’s in the worlds poorest countries, set up in Ireland over 40 years ago. Fundraising and campaigning in the UK – trying to move away from the Ireland HQ.

My role was the first digital focused role in the UK office, to facilitate and advise on digital projects – work with all teams to make them be more digital and suggest new areas

7 KEY PRINCIPLES OF CONTENT MARKETING FOR FUNDRAISERS…

…AS EXPLAINED BY THE WORLD’S BEST MC’S*

*and Vanilla Ice.

“The purpose is clear

We're here to leave your ear hurtin' severe…”

“CONCRETE SCHOOLYARD” - JUSASSIC 5, FROM “JURASSIC 5” - PAN, 1998

#1

#1

HAVE CLEAR OBJECTIVES! Jurassic 5 have a very clear objective… and it’s not just to “bust your blood vessels” or “perforate your ear drums”.

They set out to challenge the “gangsta” rap dogma - i.e. dumb lyrics about blunts, 40s and ‘bitches’, with the same Soultrain samples - using more lighthearted, partytime lyrics and poppy beats…

#1

HAVE CLEAR OBJECTIVES! Fundraisers can do this too! If you’re going to get into content, you need to know what organisational goals it’s helping with, and which parts of your fundraising efforts you’re assisting.

Are you helping convert at the decision point of donation? Are you trying to get one-off donors to give again? Are you looking to grow a prospects database etc?

#1

HAVE CLEAR OBJECTIVES! It helps to make your objectives “ladder up” - i.e. make sure the smaller objectives contribute to the larger (organisational) ones.

CONCERN’S DIGITAL CHALLENGES

Confused voice with different

parts of the organisation

No engaging content

e.g videos, infographics,

quizzes

Limited cross team

working and sharing of content

No budget for content

due to demand of instant ROI

Limited sharing of

content online

CONCERN’S DIGITAL OBJECTIVES

Greater participation

Engage regular donors

Develop social media supporters

Cross team working

Increased income

Develop new income streams

Increase donor retention

Member get member

Increased awareness

Supporters sharing content

Growing email list

PR / Blogger outreach

“Alright stop, collaborate and listen.”

“ICE, ICE BABY” - VANILLA ICE, FROM “HOOKED” - SBK RECORDS, 1989

#2

#2

COLLABORATE! Great content comes from collaboration…

First of all, collaborate internally; if you can’t share great stories about what you’re doing with each other, how are you going to do it with your supporters? Set up meetings where you discuss content opportunities and requirements.

You have more content than you think!!

#2

COLLABORATE! Next, collaborate with your audience. Ask them what they want to know about your organisation, and give it to them.

Finally, collaborate with content strategists and creatives.

Identifying what stories to tell, where to place them, and making them memorable & shareable may well require a point of view external to your charity!

#2

COLLABORATE! Every good hip hop artists knows the power of collaboration, with a constant switch up amongst Producers, DJs, Rap crews and albums littered with cover versions and guest appearances.

Vanilla’s not actually a very good example! Think about Dizzee Rascal’s success with collaborations…

CONCERN’S COLLABORATION MODEL

Policy & campaigns

Comms.

IndividualGiving

DonorCare

CreativeAgency

MediaPartner

• All teams need to be updated on content. Don't forget about donor care as they are the people who deal with any queries from the public.

• Felt like I worked for the United Nations ensuring teams were working together, sharing ideas/objectives and overcoming differences.

• Agencies can help this development as they are the outsiders, have outside knowledge and creative expertise.

BENEFITS OF COLLABORATION

One agency to guide and develop content

Learning from previous campaigns

& industry trends

Source more budgetPushing creative

boundaries

• There is value in having one agency who know you inside out… saves you time and money in the longer run.

• Learn from previous campaigns and use this to guide your strategy.

• Source budget – agencies can help with the business case to increase budget.

• Push creative boundaries – we had some hilarious meetings with our teams trying to see how far we could push our brand. We sometimes took the less crazy options, but helped us to see where our brand could go in the longer run.

COLLABORATION EXAMPLE…

• #type1uncut started with Garfield Weston Foundation getting together with Diabetes UK to provide an online resource for young people with Type 1 diabetes.

• Diabetes UK were already running meetups for groups of these young people.

• They hired Nonsense to help create the resource… the first thing we did was run workshops with the young people, who not only told us what content they really needed, but also volunteered to help make it!

• They now make and publish videos on the subjects they really care about on youtube.com/type1uncut

#3

“US” - BROTHER ALI, FROM “US” - RHYMESAYERS ENTERTAINMENT, 2009.

“My story connected with a lot of folks.”

#3

TELL AUTHENTIC STORIES! How many of you know who this is?

This is Brother Ali.

An Albino, nearly-blind, Muslim… and Gangsta rapper!

His success is entirely down to his approach of beautifully told real stories.

#3

TELL AUTHENTIC STORIES! He raps about how he loves his kid, Raheem, how he feels about his conflicted feelings on his popularity with white rap fans, how he refused to join up and fight in Afghanistan, how he turned to the Koran to escape a life of crime…

He is always finding an interesting story and telling it honestly. In fact sometimes brutal honesty.

STORYTELLING

timeline

NarrativeBackstory

Features

Core brand story told in an interesting way. History, products, people!

Ongoing snack-able and sharable conversational content.

Ownable formats are key.

Hero content for specific purposes (launches, tactical brand activity, etc).

CONTENT TYPESBA

CKST

ORY

NARR

ATIV

E

Who We Are [video:]

Xmas St. Patrick’s Day World Cup World AIDS day

Cost Of World Hunger [infographic:]

Content is the backbone of all our comms and fundraising activity.We planned across teams and my role was used as the content strategy leader.

“Who’s the man with the masterplan?”

DR. DRE, FROM “THE CHRONIC” - DEATH ROW RECORDS, 1992

#4

#4

PLAN AHEAD! Dr. Dre has come a long way from "the streets of Compton”… thanks to some awesome planning.

Namely, he always knows what his next move is going to be:

Rapper in NWA, solo artist on The Chronic, Producer for Snoop, started his own label and signed Eminem, launched Beats by Dre headphones brand, sold it to Apple… for $3billion!!!

We can learn from this. To plan effectively we need to anticipate what’s going to happen, where we’ll need content etc… more on this from James later!

SUPPORTER JOURNEY

Recruitment !

!

• change.org • Care2 • Paid Search • Facebook Ads • Social Media • Current Supporters

Campaign action

Follow up emails & calls

Increase campaigners

Convert to a donor

We took the supporters on an email journey from petition sign up, to engagement through content, to donating. Ensuring that these people share the content and grow our income. NONE of this could happen without:

• A story thread to take the supporter on

• Engaging content that people will read and share.

• 15,000 new email addresses

• All on different journeys testing along the way. Varying asks and varying levels of participation.

• It was time consuming and you need all teams sign off. But it was a useful experience to work together.

UPGRADE JOURNEY

Campaign Action (On website)

Overview & Share video

(Email)

Donate ask 1 (On website)

Cash donate ask/Regular donate ask

(Email)

Case study of our work (Email)

Email MP campaign ask

(Email)

Donate ask 2, if not given.

(Email)

Telemarketing calls to cash

donors

Relevant email comms

• The journey helps to grow our income, tell stories and grow our database.

• All donors need content and updates on projects.

• Regular donors definitely need these updates on projects and cross team asks - policy and campaigns, events and comms updates.

“Constantly movin' while makin' millions.”

“ME AGAINST THE WORLD” - TUPAC SHAKUR, FROM “ME AGAINST THE WORLD” - OUT DA GUTTA, 1995.

#5

#5

BE PROLIFIC! This is Tupac Shakur.

His discography lists 6 albums in 5 years before his untimely death… and 7 since then!!

“The Don Killuminati: The 7 day theory” was written and recorded in just 7 days!

#5

BE PROLIFIC! The point is, in order to be successful with content, you have to be committed to consistently publish.

The aim here is to build a following of people (Tupac did pretty well at this!) and that requires constantly feeding their appetite for new stories.

HIP-HOP VOCABULARY!

CREDIT: MATT DANIELS, 2014.

Rappers are incredibly prolific - however they keep their story fresh and interesting with the vocabulary they use.

A SELECTION OF CONCERN’S OUTPUT

• How Irish are you? St Patricks Day App.

• G8 Summit – was used y a number of different bloggers and charities.

• World Aids Day infographic was used to link HUNGER and HIV which was an area of our work we do not talk much about WAD gave us that opportunity. Linking HIV and Hunger together. Without the right nutrition ATR will not work properly. People suffering with HIV will gain secondary diseases caused by a lower immune system.

• Facebook apps for the cowpea campaign – driving social engagement to a lead.

We ended up producing a lot of content together. Backstory, thematic, social based and some web based.

“Read more, learn more, change the globe…”

“I CAN” - NAS, FROM “GOD’S SON” - ILL WILL, 2002

#6

#6

LEARN AS YOU GO! This is Nas.

He dropped out of school aged 14, and educated himself about African culture.

He brilliantly uses hip hop to inspire young black people to work hard and achieve their goals.

#6

LEARN AS YOU GO! This isn’t an exact science.

Some things work. Others don’t. But what you can do is iterate. They something, then try to better it.

As a discipline Content Marketing is still young, every day brings a new piece of insight and you can arm yourself with this by reading presentations and blogs online.

Stay informed, keep at the font of the curve, and - as Nas would say - “The world is yours”.

THE LEARNING CYCLE

Channels

Creativetechniques

Fundraisingmodels

• Testing and learning is a key factor in all digital campaigns. This can be hard with content, to produce two different videos or pieces of content can be expensive.

• Test new fundraising models we used social lead generation and campaigner to fundraiser conversion.

• Test new channels - Social and banner advertising

• Creative ideas – pushing ourselves and trialling new ways of engaging our audiences – quizzes, animated videos.

• Not everything worked…..even when based on insight!

EXAMPLE

14% conversion10% conversion

A key learning was how to use content during recruitment campaigns - internal debate regarding video content on landing pages - we tested the layout and saw a %4 higher

conversion on the page with the video more prominently positioned.

#7

“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man…”

“DIAMONDS FROM SIERRA LEONE” - KANYE WEST FT. JAY Z, FROM “LATE

REGISTRATION” - ROC-A-FELLA, 2005.

#7

DO BUSINESS!

Finally, always, always, always remember to do business.

For charities, this means producing content whose purpose it to help raise money (or drive people to Campaign, or reach more beneficiaries).

So, don’t be shy about explaining why you need money in your content! Good content can really help ground why you are asking for money in people’s minds.

FUNDRAISING RESULTS

Donate 1

MP action

Case Study

Donate 2

Who we are?

Donate 3

Infographic

Donate 4

• Donations increased over time…

• …in line with us giving them more content.

• Donate 4 was 400% higher than the initial donate ask

• This is still growing now.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Increased traffic to the site by 32%

38% increase in online cash

donations

Overall income from digital up

from 5% to 7%

Increased Facebook likes

by 120%

EVERYONE HAPPY!

• Increased traffic to the site by 32% - People spent longer and took more actions

• 38% increase in online cash donations – we saw an increase in donations due to the increased supporters and higher engagement on email journeys

• Overall income from digital up from 5% to 7% Increased – Digital as a percentage overall income increase from 5 – 7%

• Facebook likes by 120% - EVERYONE HAPPY!

• Everyone happy… even Flava Flav… …but he’s always happy, so that didn’t really count.

THE DON DADA?

There’s one rapper I think sums ALL this up.

The one, the only…

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

This is Mac Lethal, from Kansas City, USA. He’s probably the best content marketer on the planet!

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

His objective is to sell records and tickets to his shows.He is 100% independent of any record label. So how does he do this?

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

He has an incredible YouTube channel, full of funny skits, drunken rants, super-fast rap challenges, iPhone production tricks etc.

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

Then a random tumblr blog, called “Texts from Bennett” appears, where he posts hilarious (and pretty provocative) text conversations between him and his wannabe-gangsta cousin… it goes viral.

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

This then turns out to be a promo for a novel Mac’s written going by the same name (v. funny - worth a read!).

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

How does he promote the novel? By releasing an EP; Postcards from Kansas City… the only way you can get this is to buy the book and email him the receipt, then you get a download link in reply!

MAC LETHAL

THE DON DADA!

The book becomes a bestseller in America. FX have purchased the rights to turn it into a TV show…

…and Mac Lethal sells a lot more albums and shows than he ever did!

SHOUT OUT TO OUR HOMIES…

THANK YOU. ANY QUESTIONS?

ROB MOSLEY // @RobNonsense JAMES BARKER // @jamesbarker82