American Red Cross wants every household to do three things: to get an emergency kit, to make a communication and evacuation plan, and to be informed about the disasters that are common in their communities. That's their product. Fair enough, but how are they going to make it happen?
Although the American Red Cross has the resources to develop comprehensive marketing strategies complete with healthy amounts of audience research and environmental analyses, I asked Mark Ferguson, who managed the “Do More Than Cross Your Fingers” campaign several years ago for the American Red Cross, to share the marketing strategy for the campaign in the quick-and-dirty format.1
Defining the Audience: Moms with Kids at Home
The Red Cross's historical research and experience shows that moms with kids under 18 living at home are especially receptive to messages about disaster preparedness. No surprise there – if anyone is going to care about the nest and the babies in it, it's Mom. But some research also showed that 82 percent of moms say they drive household purchases. So, if you are trying to get a family to organize a disaster preparedness kit that will most likely require some purchases, reaching out to the people who decide what to buy makes sense.
Creating the Message: Testing the Campaign Slogan
But what do you say to a busy mom to get her to make this a priority? It was important for the Red Cross to come up with a message that spoke to moms but that also had broader appeal to the American public at large. Even if moms were the target, the message needed to be appropriate for a much wider audience as well. It was also important, said Mark, for the message to start from where people were and to help them move forward with their family disaster planning, regardless of how much they may have already done. Through their research, they knew that about 80 percent of families had taken one of the three key steps (getting a kit, making a plan, or staying informed), and this campaign was about moving them to take another.
To come up with the right message, the Red Cross hired the firm Catchword Branding, which specialized in naming. They provided a thousand possible slogans to the Red Cross, many of which were simple variations on one idea. Using a cross-functional team (marketing, development, disaster preparedness, field staff, and so on), the Red Cross whittled the list down to the best five. Those five were then tested through an online survey with Harris Interactive to find which one resonated best both with moms and with the public at large.
Of the five options, said Mark, one was in the form of a question and one played on the “heroes” theme that the Red Cross has used successfully before. Another one was deemed too snarky or too clever (survey respondents said it just didn't sound like the Red Cross). The chosen theme, Do More Than Cross Your Fingers, stood out among the five with both moms and the public at large. “It was fresh,” said Mark, “but not in any way offensive.”
Delivering the Message: Going Where Moms Are and Using Voices They Trust
With a message in hand, the next decision was how to get it out to moms. “We knew that moms are really active online,” said Mark. Thus, the campaign centered on www.redcross.org/domore, and all of the other online and offline tactics pointed back to that page.
The Red Cross also wanted to emphasize that each family is different, so what's in their emergency kits should be different too. Thus, one of the key components of the website was a game called Prepare 4 that helped you build your own personalized kit.
“One of the goals was to make disaster preparedness simple and interesting,” said Mark, “not just a brochure or a ho-hum shopping list. We wanted something interactive and friendly.” During the game, you'd answer questions that helped you build a kit that was customized for your family, right down to including something fun for the kids to do while the power is out. At the end of the game, your list of items was emailed to you so that you could go gather up the items from around your house and go shopping for what was missing.
You could also share what you included in your personal kit with others in a My Kit section, as spokesperson Jamie Lee Curtis did on the site via video. The selection of Curtis as the spokesperson was another move that connected well with moms.
The Red Cross also reached out to “mommy bloggers” who had blogged about disaster preparedness before. They pursued coverage in traditional print magazines focused on women and parenting. Marketing partnerships with Clorox and FedEx (brands many moms use regularly) rounded out the campaign channels.
CONCLUSION: ALWAYS THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK
No matter how big or how small your nonprofit may be, asking yourself the three basic questions behind a Quick-and-Dirty Marketing Plan will help ensure that you are headed in the right direction:
Who are we trying to reach?
What's our message to them?
What's the best way to deliver that message?
Creating a marketing plan before launching into tactics, however simple the plan (even if it's nothing more than answers to these questions on the back of a napkin), is always a smart approach. It's as true for nonprofit marketing as it is for disaster preparedness – you have to do more than cross your fingers!
NOTE
1 1. Kivi Leroux Miller, “The Making of ‘Do More Than Cross Your Fingers,’ ” Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog, September 2, 2009. See http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2009/09/02/the-making-of-do-more-than-cross-your-fingers/
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