What would happen if your marketing director came to you and said, “my idea is to give away $10 to 20,000 people and ask them to do something nice,”? Crazy? Take a look at a Canadian credit union called Servus. They’ve started a campaign called Feel Good Ripple. The “pay it forward” type campaign isn’t a completely new idea, but their execution of it and ability to tie it into their “Feel good about your money” tagline is excellent. They’ve set up a microsite that lets people talk about how they used the $10 they were given to unexpectedly do something nice for someone else. Each $10 given away is accompanied by a “Feel Good Ripple” card that briefly explains the idea behind it.
This is brilliant marketing. Real life social networking meets online social media marketing. People feel good about the campaign, what they’re doing to help and about the company that is helping them do it … then they talk about it. The campaign was launched less than a month ago and already has nearly 600 posts from people talking about how they’ve helped other people and thanking Servus Credit Union for launching the campaign. A quick search on YouTube showed at least a dozen people talking and showing how they were using the $10 from the campaign. There are also hundreds of Twitter tweets about the campaign.
Lots of companies give money to charities and try to leverage that for positive PR – with photo ops of executives handing over oversized checks to the charity executive directors. But this campaign is great because it gets people involved and makes them feel good about the Servus brand – so much that they’re talking about it all over the place. Isn’t that exactly what you want from your marketing?
Author: Tom Flynn III
www.lessingflynn.com
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