The other day I got pleasant surprise in the form of an email from Sofii – a website set up by Ken Burnett as “The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration.”
The email features a best of the best list of work since Sofii was set up. The item that brought a smile to my face was the RSPB brand stretch campaign I did when I was creative director of Cascaid (an agency now no longer with us). I’d love to take all the credit, but I had help, notably from a very stylish art director (take a bow Angela Coster) and a clever writer (Selina Heathcote).
There is a great deal more to the RSPB than bird watching – it’s Europe’s biggest conservation society. It protects huge swathes of British countryside, advises more than one government on matters such as climate change, fish stocks and coastal protection. It is responsible for projects of breath-taking scale – it bought the logging rights to a rainforest in order not to log it, but to let it grow back to its former glory over the next hundred years or so. How many charities could conceive a project that huge?
When we met, the RSPB had realised that, in order to grow its membership, it would have to grow public understanding of what it does. In other words, how do you get normal people to join an organisation full of twitchers?
Our solution was a campaign that focused on those special times when nature unexpectedly intrudes on your life. We called it an RSPB moment. It could be an amazing sunset, the sighting of an urban fox, a special tree, a child’s fascination with an insect, or (of course) an encounter with a bird. We made extensive use of the RSPB’s fabulous picture library – and the work that followed was simply breathtaking. Each ad, or mail-pack, was a moment in itself.
We took this thought into direct mail, press ads and online. People were invited to share their moments with each other on a microsite. The outpouring that followed was overwhelming. The moment’s campaign had touched a real nerve.
The stories that people gave us were funny, inspiring and at times very moving. For example, the woman who had gone profoundly deaf suddenly discovering that she could hear again from the cries of a kestrel hovering over her doorstep.
Sofii does what it says on the tin. It showcases examples of great fundraising work, mostly from the present, but every so often it includes some real gems from the past where the thinking is still tellingly relevant.
IIf you’re wondering about the other featured work, have a look: WWF Canada, Amnesty, Dogs Trust, Oxfam, Breakthrough India, Agnes Holliday and Rebecca Brown, Station WNED, Muscular Dystrophy Group, and St Paul.
Anyone considering a career in fundraising would be instantly seduced by the work they saw on Sofii. More importantly, so would (and were) donors. The question is, why don’t we see work of this standard being produced more often by agencies and their clients?
Truth is we all try, but it’s harder than it looks. The more people who get involved, the harder it becomes. Every so often, all the right elements come together – right clients, right work, right time – and you end up with something exhilarating and wonderful. Sometimes I think we’re a little like surfers waiting for the perfect wave, enthused by the memory of the almost perfect one that came before.
