My colleagues at Ogilvy India alerted me to a social campaign that aspires to movement status (they worked on this). That means they hope to gain broad awareness for their issue and presumably see that awareness translate into fund-raising and other key actions.
Helping Children in India
The issue is children born with cleft palates. The organization behind this is Operation Smile India – “Operation Smile India provides free surgery to repair cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities for children throughout the country.”
In case you were wondering how widespread this problem is like I was, “Approximately 1 in every 700 Indian children is born with a cleft lip and/or cleft palate with an estimated backlog of more than 1 million people living with untreated facial deformities.”
For many, the remedy is a 45-minute surgery at a cost of about $400.
We recently published an analysis of Social Brand Movements that compared the performance of movements supported by brands with social movements supported by NGOs like this one (see paper at end of post). The goal was to understand how big the largest of movements can actually aspire to get.
Operation Smile aspires to 1 million tweets/retweets with some number of complimentary video views. By our own review, that is 25% greater than the social actions supported by GlobalGiving following the Tsunami in Japan. Big goal. And the kids deserve it.
Is Raising Awareness Enough?
The recent effort to raise awareness has a few really smart elements.
1. They created a hashtag - #cleftosmile – that is easy to remember. They also created a graphic logo which uses a clever set of keystrokes - :{to:) - not quite as easy to remember nor as functional as the hashtag but still clever. There is a campaign site here.
2. They told the heart-wrenching story in a video that mixes the graphic animation and photography of affected children. This softens the aversion people instinctively have to the site of the cleft deformity
3. Users are prompted to tweet to celebrities to capture their attention and earn their own reach-busting tweets
4. They have a big, hairy, audacious goal of 1m tweets and a simple call to action
5. All calls-to-action beyond tweets and video views lead back to the Operation Smile India site. That’s where the clarity of this simple program softens a bit as users must hunt around for what they can do.
A Big Job-to-be-done
I am certain that the issue of India’s children suffering from cleft lip or palate lacks broad awareness. Still, there are likely other problems to solve as well, like making the condition relevant to more people than the parents and outer circle (e.g. grandparents) of those children affected. It is also likely a highly stigmatizing condition for all involved – child and parent. The video takes steps to soften the impact of seeing a beautiful child’s face with the condition. I don’t want to in any way feed into the stigma, merely acknowledge that fear and challenging imagery often cause people to shut down in social marketing (behavior change) programs. That's why the animation works well here.
If the tweets get loud enough, government and business leaders will pay attention:
“The idea is to raise enough of a noise to make cleft treatment a part of the government's agenda. If this translates into volunteers and funding, it would be the icing on the cake,” said an official.
When the program is meant to drive fundraising directly, we would adjust our approach. People don’t get pushed down the funnel anymore. The logic that if we just raise enough awareness a certain portion will donate isn’t sound anymore. We need to give people actions they can take now. If we are lucky enough to earn their attention, lets ask them for some money. If they will retweet then lets get them to ping a celebrity like this campaign does. Hey, how about pinging titans of industry like those who have big business stakes in India? What does Warren Buffet’s investment strategy in India look like? Maybe if I tweeted him, he might rewteet….
Presuming the bigger barrier to more children getting the much-needed surgery is money, then Operation Smile could take extra steps to make it easier for all of us to take an action. How can people donate $5 or $10? Can I start a pot of money and get my friends to give enough until we reach $400 for one surgery? Can we all give micro-donations via mobile device?
Clearly, one of the biggest innovations from digital in fund-raising is mobile micro-donations. Within that is the behavioral economics “truth” that we just need to remove all barriers and make taking an action easier.
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All that being said, no child should struggle with the challenges of a cleft palate. Any parent can feel some of the emotional struggle that these children must feel.
Let’s throw caution to the wind. Give what you can. Tell your friends and social connections about these children. And by all means, copy-and-paste and tweet this today:
RT now #CleftToSmile and help Operation Smile India deliver a smile to children who deserve that simple beauty. http://bit.ly/ZgKfRs
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