Health charities trying bold new fundraising tricks

MS Society ‘Do you want to flee Canada?’ initiative tailored for a world with Ice Bucket Challenges

In the era of mobile fundraising and the Ice Bucket Challenge, corralling donors has become more challenging for health charities.

Staid, conservative appeals are passé, but brand burnishing must be done sensitively in deference to the real people living with the diseases.

The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada’s recently unveiled campaign is a bold, cheeky initiative aimed at increasing awareness of a condition that affects about 100,000 Canadians annually.

The effort’s Fight or Flee message centres on a startling statistic unearthed by the MS International Federation in 2013.

“The need to stand out is much greater.” MANISH KACKER MCMASTER UNIVERSITY MARKETING PROFESSOR

The federation found that globally Canada has the highest rate of MS; four times higher than the U.S.; 27 times higher than Pakistan.

Stark print ads direct readers to endms.ca where selecting “Fight” yields personal stories and information about risk factors, research, donating and events.

Clicking “Flee,” however, leads to a list of countries with lower MS rates and real-time information about flights (one-way, of course), weather and real estate, as well as tips about culture and etiquette.

In Japan, the site advises, “eating and drinking while walking in public is frowned upon;” we’re told, “Heads up — the president is a polygamist” in South Africa; and the site declares that in Egypt “PDA is BAD. And BAD isn’t an acronym.”

“Our CEO joked that he’s waiting for the call from a consul general somewhere who feels that we’ve maligned their country,” said Owen Charters, the MS Society’s chief marketing and development officer. Flee pages also include a link to a Government of Canada website where would-be defectors can renounce their citizenship.

“Marketing from non-profit has become a lot more sophisticated and competitive; and the need to stand out is much greater,” said McMaster University marketing professor Manish Kacker.

“There is some debate in charity and non-profit marketing on how effective are facts as opposed to campaigns that are built around emotional appeals. This is a fact-based campaign, but it does tap into the emotional side, in terms of appealing to the competitive spirit of Canadians. In that sense it is a little different and likely to be successful.”

The Society charged year-old Toronto boutique agency Mackie Biernacki with devising a concept to raise its profile. The charity’s last major campaign in 2007 focused on people living with MS and bluntly urged “Give now.” The conundrum was: “How do we get them onto people’s top five consideration lists?” said Mackie Biernacki principal Steph Mackie. “And how do you do that competing against, not only the big boys like heart and stroke and cancer that have nice budgets behind them and great awareness, but also how do you fight against the international pull now that you can support anything and everything around the world that appeals to you?”

The solution balances the dire facts of “Fight” with the levity of “Flee.”

“Just because you’re talking about a very serious issue doesn’t mean that there isn’t some lighthearted side to the story,” said Charters. “We’re not having fun at those countries’ expense; we’re having fun with the idea that if you truly are Canadian” you’ll buy into fighting MS.

Last summer, people around the world and celebrities such as LeBron James, Taylor Swift and Benedict Cumberbatch were filmed as a bucket of ice water was dumped on their head to promote awareness of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). The viral videos, which resulted in unprecedented millions of dollars generated for the rare disease, made other fundraisers take note.

“Ice Bucket Challenge is a great example of something that was social media savvy. It was exciting; it was easy to do; it raised a lot of money; it really built the brand,” said Charters. “And while we’re not going to create an Ice Bucket we do need to always be aware that there are trends, there are things about the way people are engaging with causes, that we need to be competitive about. We need to be part of that and we don’t want to lose ground doing some of the same old things.”

The Society’s campaign will receive $3-5 million worth of free print and broadcast media placement, said Charters. The organization’s costs to develop the campaign were “less than 10 per cent of that,” he added.

It augurs to be a good investment, said Brock University marketing professor Todd Green.

“People get really upset when charities decide to spend money on branding (or six-figure CEO salaries), but there’s no way they work less hours, or have any less difficult task than the CEO of Coke or McDonald’s,” he said. “The non-profit and the charities have to get through the ad clutter that consumers face every day,” somewhere around 3,000 to 4,000 ads.