NFPtweetup 12: I went as me and left as an Ewok!

I went to another fantastic NFPtweetup last night. Run and organised by the lovely people at Beautiful World it's an event that continues to motivate and inspire me. I just love the fact that third sector people of all types (from coders through to direct marketers) get together once a quarter, to learn, share, chat, drink and think together in such a relaxed and informal way. 

What really inspired me last night was James Sadri from Greenpeace UK’s presentation on the recent Volkswagen campaign; you just have to check it out if you’re not aware of it.

The campaign objective is for VW to turn away from the Dark Side by dropping their opposition of key environmental laws.

James’s presentation was brilliant, a perfect NFPtweetup presentation because he delivered it with a smile, shared lots with us all and was so obviously in love with and passionate about his job.

But what really got me thinking was a fantastic aspect of the campaign that was created to incentivise people to spread the word and get others to sign up.

In the hope that you might win a limited edition T-shirt, those who sign up to the campaign can embark on Jedi training. Basically you sign up, you register, and you’re given a personal page and URL. Then of course you are asked to spread the word into your own social networks. Greenpeace want to harness the power of your referral to get your friends and contacts to sign up and spread the word, you know the theory here.

But you get given points, one for every view of your personal page and five for every person who signs up to the campaign from your page. The more points you are given, the further along the Jedi training path you go. Starting as an Ewok the goal is to unlock the T-Shirt once you have accumulated 1,500 points. Genius.

James went on to describe the lengths that people have gone to in order to further their path to the T-Shirt. My favourite was the guy who set up a blog claiming to know how to hack the page and get the T-Shirt, when you click on the link for the way to do it; you of course end up on his personal page and give him an extra point!

So I had to give it a go. I got home, registered and set up my own page. So far I’ve progressed from Ewok to Princess Leia and just unlocked Jedi Mind Tricks next stop is to unlock the Wookie at 100 points. Have a look here to see what I’m on about.  (And yes, that was a shameless attempt to get another page view.)

I loved pretty much everything about the campaign, but think that this idea is brilliant. We can argue if all traffic is good traffic, but in this case putting the message in front of many people as possible seems like a decent outcome.

On a personal level it’s reminded me of how brilliant Greenpeace can be, and reminded me to set up that Direct Debit I keep on thinking about.

NB > I recognise that is the second post with a Star Wars theme in the last few months.  Please don’t worry, I would describe myself as geekish, but I’m not that Star Wars geek we all know! And here is the proof!