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Rethinking Web strategy for nonprofits: The New Best Practices (1/3)

#1 Think of small gift donors as impulse buyers. It needs to be as easy for them to give $10 to you as it is for them to pick up a candy bar at the checkout aisle. Katherine Lumb made this great remark on Twitter a while back: "Usability 2.0 is not so much 'I can't figure this out' as it is 'I don't have time for this sh*t'."

When you're asking for a $5 - $25 donation, you're not competing with other charitable giving. Instead, you're up against daily consumer spending. It's a quick choice. Not unlike ordering a pizza instead of cooking dinner or picking up a magazine at the grocery.

The mental barrier to giving is very low. But the expectation for an easy process is extremely high.

This American Life (my very favorite show) routinely asks listeners to give $5 or $10 to cover the streaming costs of its free podcasts. Keep it free. Keep it from burdening our home station. Reasonable request, right? I've gone to the Web site to give three times, but have never actually gone through with it. Why? Because I'm confronted with this - a form designed for pledge week:


It's long. Requires a credit card. And doesn't appear to offer to save my information to make it easy for me next time.

Compare that it Kiva.org. Hipsters' favorite little international loan collective. They ask for ~$25. A little higher, but still in the impulse give category. After I fill in my amount, it can be this simple:

Can I choose to give by credit card? Yeah. Or, I can just login with Paypal and it knows all my address and personal information + let's me give with one click.

It's fast, easy and relevant to the way I want to give.

How can This American Life take this impulse give approach into their own fundraising efforts? Four suggestions:

• Make PayPal a payment option on the site.
• Make recurring payments easy - either automatic or text / email to confirm
• Offer text to give (The host asks for a $5 gift during the program. Asking people to text a short code to a number to automatically have a $5 charge added to their phone bill is about as easy as it gets)
• Partner with iTunes or other fulfillment sources to let listeners name their own price for the podcast (letting them give while they're directly getting the value)

Laughing at ourselves: Tourism humor that works

Since writing a few posts on the “Not in Columbus” convention and tourism campaign, I’ve found myself in an ongoing offline debate about what works and what doesn’t in tourism advertising. Since I have little or no experience in the category, I’ve been educating myself the blogger way: search, click and play.

No question, it’s a tough business. Glamming up the decapitated mountains of West Virginia, differentiating one artsy desert community from another, making even a big-ass mall seem like a destination.

It’s no wonder we want to laugh at ourselves.

But doing humor well…. That’s tough. The campaigns that do it well deliver three key things consistently:

1. Communicate a vibe, a personality of the place
2. Quickly transition from a self-effacing laugh to the good stuff
3. Make it easy for you to see yourself in them (either in the story or in the place)

My two favorite examples of campaigns doing it well couldn’t be more different:

Minneapolis' Unconvention Campaign.
Sponsored by the city's groundswell - a group of independent organizations, businesses and people - and centered on the playing host to the Republican convention, this integrated print and Web campaign is laugh-out-loud funny and still delivers on all the criteria above.

 

See the full campaign

Maine's "It's Got to Be Maine" Campaign

Sure, it's one thing to do independent well. But, what about official advertising? The kind that has to go through channels and committees and compromises?

I like Maine's campaign because it survived the gauntlet relatively intact. It pokes a little fun at the state, but in a personal, inside-joke kind of way. And, once its campy humor stops you, the fast-paced montage communicates a wholly unexpected vibe. WKB Spier produced this campaign. You can see more examples in "the work" section of their Web site.

Breaking through: Online tools that convert browsers to fans

We've probably all found ourselves building Web applications we weren't quite sure about. Like, say, a Merman-a-gram or a hip-hop video featuring a personalized BBQ bottle getting down with its saucy self. (Yes, that is me on the bottle - courtesy of friend Joy.)

For every couple thousand of these little interactive wonders we chef up, there are a special few that manage to captivate an audience. That hold us from the first click until ... hey, where'd that last 10 minutes go?

Two recent examples to get lost in:

Edu-commerce

Closing a high-engagement sale (think selecting an insurance plan, buying a car, etc.) is always a challenge online. Lost is the sense of urgency, the gentle prodding by the "expert" in the room. Instead there's the ability to browse, to get frustrated, to wander off...

Imagine how much harder that sale is when you add in ignorance. An entirely new group of novice buyers entering a specialists category. Ouch.

Indie ad agency Woods Witt Dealy & Sons paired education with e-commerce to solve just such a problem for IRO Cycle.

Short story: Fixed gear bikes are to messengers as hush puppies are to hipsters. They're that one have-to-have item that broke through the barrier from enthusiast to fan. And, suddenly a whole bunch of folks who'd never wielded as much as a pedal wrench before wanted their own stripped down urban two-wheeled ride.

The IRO Cycle build-your-bike site takes shoppers into the grit of building a fixed gear. You pick your drivetrain, your rider, etc., but each choice shares both the lingo-ed "what" and the plain English "why."

Just about anyone could feel confident building a bike on this site. AND they'll walk away talking the talk.

(Congratulations to Kristen Milligan on this one. This is the very first press release find I've posted.)

Creativity Fix

How many online quizzes have you taken? A slew, I imagine. From What kind of care bear are you (?) to who's your mate? Half of them I click off long before they've diagnosed me.

Enter this gorgeous quiz from My Deco, a publisher tagged as a furniture fix for the decorati.

Every question is answered by selecting a conceptual image from a delightful mood board of ideas. Your ideal bedroom, favorite chair, color palette for your living room.

At the end, you get the verdict. Just what kind of design style you have. But, the experience of the quiz is enough to communicate the expertise of the publisher. Yeah, they get it. And, I can't wait to see more.

Spotted by creative co-worker Carrie on Creative Envy.

Breaking through: High-engagement agency marketing

Writing about Plaid's quest the other day made me think about the changing ways agencies are engaging potential clients, partners and employees. Increasingly, they're not settling for create-and-wait tactics, rather they're engaging best-fit audiences with can't-resist content and experiences.

Today's agency marketing is LESS like:

• Spray-and-pray mailers
• Dialing for dollars against generic lists of "creative decision makers"
• Pulpit positions at preaching-to-the-choir conferences
• If-you-build-it-they-will-come agency Web sites

It's MORE like:

• Creating opportunities to share ideas
• Spending time with like minds
• Building value around content
• Making the Web a personal experience

In our fast-moving, client-driven world, agency leaders are investing time and resources in changing the playing field. The results are ... pretty desirable. Check out these two examples.

Space150: Rip up your white paper, host an event

Thought leadership used to come in a 15-page white paper, complete with charming 12-point type and the occasional bar graph. Today, it comes in shared time and ideas. Agencies leveraging their partners  and networks to create immersive events on topics clients are actually interested in.

Check out Space150's DeepSpace Mobile workshop for a great example. 

Cole & Weber: Create deep dive industry experiences

Industry relevance was once a column of client logos. Today, it's a sense of the experience. Of speaking the language, having apropos theories, demonstrating a targeted approach.

Cole & Weber brings a great example to life on this micro site showcasing their experience in the wine category. It's peppered with thought leadership. Has a taste of quality, a note of investment and a nose of confidence.  (Metaphor - and post - officially exhausted).

Breaking through: The power of direct mail

If you were out and about last night, you probably noticed one sure way to break through: burrito giveaways. Chipotle's free burrito event netted crowds stretched around multiple city blocks at the downtown locations here.

But, if you don't have a burrito bar built into your core business strategy, here's another suggestion:

Direct mail.

Sure, it sounds old school, but I'd argue that some of the most engaging DR work going on right now can be found among the newsprint and val-packs right in our mailboxes. It represents opportunity seized from the jaws of faux highlighters and foil starbursts. So attention will be paid!

My favorite is the new catalog work coming out of Neiman Marcus. This seen@nm series targets a younger audience with a more editorial style and breaks out of the usual catalog form factor with a tabloid shape and a great matte stock that just makes the sexy color pop. The quality and content feels exclusive. It not only breaks through -- I'm guessing it's a temporary keeper in a stack of recent issues of Vogue and The New Yorker in bedrooms around America.

My second favorite is totally local, although the concepts are paralleled nationally.

Local example. Take a look at this item:

Couple of buy local stickers and a business card from the Director of Dangerous Ideas at AreYouBrilliant.com. It came in a plain envelope, handwritten with my address and stamped with the brilliant logo.

I was curious and logged on to check it out. (Incidentally: logged on? Total adopter word. Who logs on anymore? Oh, wait, sorry Mack.)

Seems like community action, right? Nope. It's an insurance agent who specializes in local businesses. And, what's more - I wasn't even disappointed to find that out. The Web site features local businesses, tells their stories and positions Ryan Morgan (said director) as a really authentic partner to them.

Fantastic execution.

National example: HBO's True Blood.

This effort was definitely buzz marketing instead of social outreach, but it's still an interesting approach. A slew of other bloggers beat me to posing about it; so, I won't go too deep, but essentially I got a padded envelope in the mail that  contained a "free sample" of a new synthetic blood:

And a decidedly creepy overview of just what an innovation in SNACKING this new choice in blood would be.

The only URL in sight? This creepy destination.

Ok, you win, I'll Google. Turns out it's publicity for True Blood, a new show about vampires premiering the Fall. A name I'll definitely remember. And, an experience that created something between dumbfoundedness and curiosity.

Check out Yes but No but Yes for more.

Breaking through: "Crack the code" advertising

That was a term coined by fellow strategist Carey S in a last minute could-have-been-manic-were-we-not-so-intentionally-mellow brainstorm this winter. We were talking about what it is that makes sports ads like Jordan's Clock Tower break through? What takes them from being watched in prime time to being chatted about around the water cooler?

Our theory: It's the respect they pay their audience. They way they bring us in and make us feel clever. The way they reward us for the silly trivia we collect, the seasons of television we watch, the unique perspective we each have on the world

CTC advertising generally falls into two categories:

#1 You're like us.
These campaigns connect with us on a passionate level. They unpack the big things we believe in and serve them up in dramatic ways. They are the corollary to an inside joke - the secret handshake that only people like us would know.

• Example: The Become Legendary Campaign that W + K created for Nike/Jordan. The fourth in the series was this Clock Tower spot ("No Cinderallas") that played in the runup to the tournament and left big proud fans welling up on couches around the country:
  
  

• Example: The Economist. Although BBDO's long-standing well-written in red campaign is probably the clearest example, even the newer campaigns target the pride in target readers. The idea that their sense of savvy and their curiosity make them part of an elite group of global citizens. The sense that they are truly banded together by difference.
  
  

#2 You remember.
It's rewarding to be the first one to figure out the puzzle. To trump your sister by guessing the identity of the murderer halfway through the new episode of Law & Order. To run the board at the annual holiday Trivial Pursuit match.

These "you remember" ads engender similar competition. They tease and hide just enough to make us want to guess it first.

• Example: HP's delightful Personal campaign developed by Goodby, Silverstein and Partners that features a celebrity's hands revealing their online life. Only at the very end - after glimpses and clues - do we find out who's online life it really is.
  

• Example: Discovery Channel's I Love the World brand ad created by 72andSunny. Yeah, it's wildly addictive music, but behind that is the montage to rule all montages. Places, shows, animals. Any number of things to competitively guess at from across the living room. Hey, wasn't that the whale from season 4....?

How it's social: A fellow traveler at Bridge Worldwide has been writing a lot about "marketing with meaning" these past weeks. A concept that may sound philanthropic, but is really just social. It's about creating engagement and content & experiences that people actually want, rather than forcing our messages into aggravated ears.

If you should go looking around online for people's comments about the Jordan spot, you'll find mentions of shivers, of welling up, of wanting to get out and practice. For the Discovery Channel spot, texted sing-alongs. For HP, personal takeoffs. The list goes on. The engagement in these "crack the code" campaigns is truly emotional. Pride, joy, curiosity. Uniquely human. Perfectly translated.

Local marketers who get it

Let's get physical for a moment, ad friends, with a couple of great examples of local marketing done right. Starting with agency work and wandering the whole way down to a homemade, hand-stuffed message from a local restaurant:

First up: The Women's Fund of Central Ohio Keyholder Event

This annual fundraiser supports grants to programs that promise social change for women and girls. Every year, they feature a well-known speaker. This year, it's Miriam Peskowitz, author of The Daring Book for Girls.

The invitation and Web site were created by Ologie (long before I arrived!) and - I think - powerfully bring to life the book, the theme and the cause. The pieces feel very high end for local greater good and have been received with something akin to delight.

AND- The Web site (again for a local market event) has been nominated for a Webby. Vote for it under Living / Events on the People's Voice.

Onto: The Makeup Counter at Nordstom

Talk about making a big brand personal! Nordstrom has always been known for service, but sometimes they outdo even themselves.

Recently, I went to the Laura Mercier counter to get a fab new lip gloss (seriously, baby doll gloss, you've got to have it) and was helped by a perfectly gracious associate.

Then, the following week, I got this hand-written note from her - thanking me for the purchase. That's a business card I was careful to save.

 

 

Finally: Figlio Restaurant in Grandview / Columbus

We've talked a lot lately about brands leveraging Twitter to listen to users - to find small problems before they get big; to uncover ideas that might make better products.

Peter and Laurie Danis, owners of Figlio, have perfected the old-school version of that.

They have a great personal story about tossing their law practices for the love of food. For caring about work with passion. So, they scan the local newspaper's career section every week. And, target people who've recently been promoted with a great little congratulations package:

A letter about your accomplishment. Their story. And a gift certificate for dinner. All asking that you share your celebration with them.

And, all bizarrely genuine.

 

 

Chics Who Click: Which new women's site wins?

When a couple of media powerhouses launch competitive sites in the same month, it tends to make a little noise. Especially when they're both going after 40+ women. A demo they'd like us to believe is veiled in mystery, heretofore only defrocked by Lifetime and iVillage. A demo largely ignored by online marketers and jonesing for some real content.

Back to the powerhouses. We're talking about one of the founders of the Internet vs. the real-world lipstick mafia:

• Shine: Yahoo's latest attempt to win over the world with content comes to life in this editorial-style portal.


• WowOwow: By chics, for chics, this portal is the self-funded creation of Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Mary Wells and Joni Evans.

Well, a month has gone by since the shiny new sites were unveiled. Plenty of time for a little investigation and trial and error.

What's working:

• Shine is smart to lead with thoughtful editorial. A big smart topic that is at once personal, female and thought provoking. Even women who love Oprah and Sex and the City have a conflicted relationship with their girly side. Leading with content and following with dish lets people get comfortable.


• WowOwow is making great use of its own real network. Offline heros - like Candice Bergen, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg - are creating fresh content for the site.


• I've come to really dig the Hair Day forecast on WowOwow. At first I thought it was vaguely insulting, but, really, it's chat-able and iconic and works for me.


• Shine feels like a magazine. The buckets of content. The reader feedback. It has excelled at taking an offline guilty pleasure and delivering it online completely intact.

What's not:

• WowOwow, meet Ajax. Ajax, Wowowow. It's easy to see the difference between savvy Yahoo and this group of newbies. The usability of the site is aggravating. Always more clicks. Even for easy little widgets and polls that should be included inline with the content.


• Shine's top nav is a little reductive considering the pop of everything else. They've designed it to encourage a full scroll. Which is interesting and oh-so-tabloid, but I think users are used to being able to increasingly limit their content to what's most relevant to them. That feels underplayed here.


• WowOwow strikes me as a little too reliant on community content. Everything is an open-ended question with a click to see what other people said. Couldn't we take some learnings from Twitter on this interaction?


• WowOwow gave up their above-masthead real estate to advertising. Ouch. Unless done incredibly well, that's a killer in editorial. And this snowy site is not done well enough to pull it off

Final word:
WowOwow walks away from some of the proven-for-a-reason principles of user experience. And community. And, for what? A 40+ Facebook group? Uh uh. 40 is the new 25. Your audience doesn't need Internet for Dummies.

Meanwhile Yahoo steps up the plate with one of the best sites I've seen from them. It's clever. Approachable. Content rich. Comfortable.

I hate to say it, but: I'm going with Goliath on this one. Go Shine!

Favorite new multimedia sites

With every new location comes a new pipe to deal with... and this one is... slim. Checking out Flash sites lately has been a little circa-1997-56k-modem-enter-a-URL-and-go-make-dinner-while-it-loads. Nonetheless there have been a few delightful ones this month that were absolutely worth the wait:

Best B2B
Motorola City's show-and-tell of their commitment to public safety. Wait, stop yawning at the title, this site is slick:

Best I-don't-even-begin-to-get-it but somehow admire what you're doing:
Modernista's site relaunch that basically leverages DHTML and some open sourceness to dynamically assemble content from around the Web. I think the point is: we fundamentally get how the Web works in ways that other agency's don't. I think the visual experience is, in a word: painful.

 

Best basic landing page:
Haagen Dazs Help the Honeybees issue site. For its beautiful illustration and actually worthwhile soundtrack.

Best for kids:
Nintendo's Professor Layton and the Curious Village game promotional page. It brings the game to life and (at least seems) very fun and interactive for kids.

It should always be...

This EASY to use a press room:

The media room for Andy Beal's Radically Transparent offers enough content to power six news articles, four custom reviews, a buying decision and an ongoing relationship.

All in one place. All super easy to navigate.

This FUN to watch a branded video:

AKQA and Cake really fundamentally get it. It being social media and brands. You have to be able to take liberties - with yourself, your culture and your customers. You have to be able to delight and entertain and be completely different than a 30 second spot.

Little escapes the snark of this video from Pot Noodle. A piece that 200,000 people have already watched this month.

This PERSONAL to watch a recruitment video:

When Molly posted this video on Twitter, I had to ask her if it was sanctioned or organic ... the very simple delivery is so brimming with personality and conversation that I couldn't imagine it making it through any agency's self-marketing process.

But, somehow it did.

And, the simplicity of it - from an agency that COULD do anything - might just make it even more compelling.

This SIMPLE to share information:

Speaking of Twitter, I've been logged on for the past two days reading some of your favorite bloggers cover Ad Age's Digital Marketing summit in real time.

The posts include verbatims, analysis and a little argument. It's addictive.

This OPTIMISTIC to profile an audience:

After it sat for months on my teetering bedside stack of good intentions, I've finally picked up RenGen and dug in. Definitely my favorite industry book of this year... as much for its optimism as its smarts and illustrative examples.

Martin connects the dots from our creative and intellectual selves to a theory of renaissance that will define a generation.