Buddhist Marketer

Fresh Air Fund taps bloggers to spread the word

The Fresh Air Fund has apparently gotten wind that social media is the way to go when it comes to social justice concerns.  I recently received an email, as a blogger, imploring me to help spread the word about their efforts:

Hi

I would like to ask for your help with getting the word out on Grrl ISO with an issue I thought you and your readers care about. The Fresh Air Fund is in need of hosts for this summer. Host families are volunteers who open their hearts and home to a child from the city to give a fresh air experience that disadvantaged children never forget. I’ve set up a social media news release which explains everything, so please feel free to use any of the images, logos, videos, banners, buttons, etc:

http://freshair.smnr.us

Please let me know if you are able to post and send me the link. Your effort can help make sure inner-city children have everything they need!

While I applaud any attempt to harness new channels towards the achievement business goals, I’m also a big believer in excellence in execution.  The circles below must intersect:

• Leveraging relatively innovative methods (social media) for achieving business goals (find hosts for The Fresh Air Fund)
• Leveraging them in a manner consistent with both the business’ vector path (insert internal mission and vision of The Fresh Air Fund here) and the vector path of said innovative method [more]
• Executing at a level of quality consistent with the manner in which the (Fresh Air Fund) business is executed

I suspect the circle representing the final bullet point above is a free-floater that doesn’t intersect with the two bullets that precede it.

1. I clicked on the link provided
2. I noted yet did not judge the divergence between the look and feel of this splash page vs. the look and feel of the core Fresh Air Fund page

3.  I scrolled down and noted some copy-and-paste .html code for bloggers to easily add banners to their own social media empires.  Innovative!

4.  But then I looked at the banners that would be served off of this code.  The creative messaging on the banner says nothing about becoming a host.  P.S. the title tag has a word that’s spelled incorrectly.

Wow, it looks even worse once its actually implemented!  Did anyone even QA this?!  Does this banner say “click” to you?  Eeekers!

5.  And plus, the landing page off a click-through on this banner is not a “become a host” landing page; it’s a “donate” page!!  Okay, let’s pretend that the campaign’s goals were to drive donations (which it isn’t, but I’m being generous): the donation page has no clear “call to action”.  Give us a form, people!  Create a stand-alone splash page!   Too!  Many!  Places!  To!  Click!

Sure, they’re a not-for-profit, but if you’ve engaged someone to help with social media, you need to make sure you’ve picked the right team.  I have no idea who was advising FAF on this effort, but the amount of thought given to the donation conversion funnel is best illustrated by the quality of the banner above.

So I give a nod to The Fresh Air Fund, but recommend that in their next go-round, they invest a bit more and hire a smarter partner.  Great job in including easy-to-copy-and-paste .html code on their splash page for bloggers, but more work is needed in the quality of the entire campaign.  Why go to all this effort if you’re just going to ask people to put up ads that are the equivalent of public access cable TV (with all due respect to the entertaining low-budget NYC show I’ve Got Munchies) asking them to donate when what you really need are hosts?

I’ve donated to FAF in the past, and I think it’s important that any online campaign to encourage donations to this organization — particularly as government-funded social services hit the chopping block — be designed and executed by someone at least as good as yours truly.  So, great effort Fresh Air Fund, but feel free to give me a ring if you want the next iteration of this campaign to be executed at a level of quality consistent with the manner in which the rest of your business is run.

Don’t just market; market smarter!