Moved by the words of a child...

Because it’s a very good idea to meet in real life the people you ‘meet’ on Twitter I went out for a coffee and some cake with Flora yesterday. Flora is Direct Marketing Manager at Medical Aid for Palestinians. So, we had coffee and cake and we shared some fundraising stories and opinions, we had a lovely time.

Flora told me about an ad MAP ran in November last year in the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. An ad designed and written in-house, an ad with no images, an ad that led with a quote from an 11 year old child. I asked Flora to send me the ad and she did.

It made me really angry and it’s been on my mind all day.

It's the voice of a child that makes me angry. It’s knowing that Maryam’s words are real.  

The airstrikes started on Wednesday 14^th November. The ad appeared in the Guardian on the 17^th. 

I’m a great believer that urgency and a looming deadline can often deliver the best ads.

Ads that are clear, have impact and haven’t been toned down by re-writes and interference.

It’s simple, clear, compelling, raw and authentic. And it worked. I love it.

MAP are an amazing organisation, doing amazing work. I support them, if you want to as well that would be lovely.

QR Codes, newspapers & non profits

I blogged earlier in the year about a growing obsession I have with QR Codes.  I’m really interested in how they can be used to dramatically enhance charity and non profit organisations print appeals and advertising, by creating easy links to content that will bring appeals alive with images, sound and video.

So I was really impressed with the use of QR Codes by Reporters Without Borders to support a recent press campaign.  A great concept, a link to the website and thankfully a donation ask!

This short video shows how simple and effective the campaign was.

There is a lot of cynicism surrounding QR Codes, probably quite rightly because no-one really knows if consumers are going to accept them at the volume required to drive mass use by fundraisers.  But this example shows the significant potential of fusing smartphones, video and print together to create really powerful fundraising messages that are more relevant for the potential supporters of today and tomorrow.

As I said in my previous post, there is much more to QR Codes than supporting print, but it seems a great place to start.


Again found on the Osocio website.