Chalk Social worked with The Children’s Society to raise awareness of the charity’s Tough N Buff campaign.
Brief
The Children’s Society have struggled to engage with a younger audience, being a children’s charity their core audience base is of an older demographic, with 60% of their monthly donors aged 35+ and much of their work striking a chord with parents or grandparents.
The overarching idea of Tough n Buff was that it would be a way to connect with a younger audience, bringing forward an active and fun way of fundraising that would introduce the charity to that demographic. Tying in social media with youthful competitiveness would boost the ‘shareability’ of the campaign whilst creating an incentive for users to commit to their full 30 days of the challenge, and more importantly in the long term, to fundraising.
Once a Tough n Buff recruit had completed their first 30 day challenge, it was something they could repeat again and again and continue to raise money for the charity. As well as this idea of longevity of donations, the Children’s Society could use this new donor base as a platform from which to encourage further involvement in fundraising activities, opening up possibilities that had never been available to them previously. To exacerbate an already significant challenge for Chalk Social, this demographic is stereotypically among the hardest to reach.
Strategy
The activity was split into two bursts of activity – one in summer, when people are feeling more active, more willing to get outside and accept a challenge. The second burst was just after Christmas, when everyone is feeling like they have over indulged and under exercised. The second burst was also about re engaging those people that had signed up to the challenge in July, and could be re recruited to fundraise further for the Children’s Society.
The initial burst of activity which ran in July was about increasing awareness, with display activity delivering millions of impressions to boost an understanding of how the 30 day challenge worked and retarget those who had visited the Tough n Buff site but failed to convert. Interest targeting was used to identify individuals that had shown an interest in fundraising, charity work and volunteering. This would be our core target audience – individuals that were interested in making a difference for charity, but weren’t necessarily ‘specialists’ or ‘dedicated’ givers. They were a new generation of donors waiting to be engaged and recruited.
We also overlaid data that segmented users as being in-market to donate. These were users that were already involved and engaged in such activity and could therefore be considered further down the conversion funnel. We were cautious not to focus too heavily on an audience that were into ‘fitness’ as such, recognising that the 30 day challenges we were proposing were meant to be light hearted, about fundraising and about challenging friends to join the drive. The broader targeting that we applied built a solid level of awareness among an audience that was likely to engage with the Tough n Buff campaign, and from which we would be able to launch the second part of the campaign, at the most competitive time of year for this sector, Christmas.
Execution
Creative was a mix of bold, branded display creative, and more UGC style participant focused Facebook creative. It was important for creative to be relevant to the 30 day challenges involved in Tough n Buff, but refrain from focusing in too much on the sports aspect of the campaign as the ‘sport-lover’ was not our key audience. We couldn’t alienate our key audience by using imagery that would suggest a certain level of interest in sport was necessary to join in. The whole campaign was about fun leading to fundraising and this was always at the forefront of creative direction.
Result
Over 75% of recruits were 25 and under
Through ‘Tough n Buff’ the Children’s Society had not just connected with an audience they had always struggled to engage, but converted them into fundraisers for the charity. And the proof is in the numbers as over three quarters of sign ups to the 30 day challenges were 25 and under.
Reach and engagement volumes soared
6,048,809 million impressions were delivered across two channels, driving significant communications awareness as well as over 70,000 clicks to site. As an average over the campaign, 83% of all site visitors were uniques, and conversion rates were high. The campaign itself drove 80% of all traffic to the ‘Tough n Buff’ site, and 70% of all sign ups to ‘Tough n Buff’ during the live period. This also led to a significant uplift in traffic to the main Children’s Society site, in particular unique visitors.
860% increase in Facebook page fans
On Facebook, the Tough n Buff page saw an 860% increase in Page Fans, demonstrating that this was the first point of contact and a totally new connection being built with the Children’s Society. This was the first touch point in a purely prospecting journey.
Further to surpassing all targets, the campaign raised over £10,000 via Tough n Buff for The Children’s Society directly through ads alone.
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