Jeez, it’s been a while between drinks. I guess I’m learning that you can plan all you like, but sometimes life just gets in the way.
One of the factors at blame for the prolonged delay between posts is university. When it hits mid-semester it gets pretty hectic. Take one of my units, marketing planning and implementation, for example.
This is one of the more practical subjects in a Marketing major. Most of our assessment revolves around a major marketing plan, which as you may have guessed, was due last week.
It’s quite a fascinating little project for a student actually.
We were briefed by an actual employee from World Vision Australia earlier in the semester and provided with a real-world project. At a corporate level, our objective was – at least on paper – to raise $1.5m on a measly $100,000 budget for the Global Food Crisis. Among various other things, the difficulty lies in the fact that:
- Relatively few people have actually heard of the GFC
- It doesn’t have the same “selling power” as say a natural disaster e.g. Victorian bushfire tragedy
- They ran a campaign for the GFC last year. It’s difficult returning to the very same donors – most donations come from past donors – and asking for money for the exact same cause they contributed to the year before.
So we had to raise money for a cause which many aren’t familiar with, where the ones most likely to contribute have already done so, and which doesn’t have what I’d call “x factor”.
So what did we do?
Well, first of all, we decided that it would be smart to look for new sources of donations and not go down the same old route of hitting up past donors, but we didn’t want to neglect this avenue completely as it has been the most profitable in the past.
So our 3 objectives were as follows:
- To raise $600,000 for the GFC campaign from corporate donors;
- To raise $500,000 for the GFC from past World Vision donors who have never been involved with the GFC; and
- To raise $400,000 from new donors for the GFC
I took it upon myself to brainstorm ideas for the first objective, that of corporates.
Due to the lack of awareness surrounding the Global Food Crisis, I felt that an important part of any strategy would be to start a buzz – PR, word of mouth, online involvement… whatever. People needed to start talking because otherwise what value could we sell to corporates?
After a few nervous moments, and a quick call to the bro, I hatched a plan.
We would enter a short film into the world’s biggest amateur film festival, Tropfest. The film would run for only 7 minutes as per the competition guidelines, so the budget wouldn’t be a problem and would be about the GFC. We would then sell sponsorships to corporations on the premise that they would receive positive publicity, recognition, and an increased company profile for their efforts.
As part of this objective, we would create a microsite specifically dedicated to the Global Food Crisis campaign. The website, apart from featuring information relevant to the cause, would have a competition section where aspiring directors could upload a video detailing why they should direct our short film. A dedicated Facebook and Twitter page would also be created, providing updates on the film’s production, publicising the search for a director competition, and of course informing people of the cause. In this way it was hoped that we would reach the youth segment and wider public as well as attract the corporate dollar.
I’d like to hear your thoughts.
