ESP puts the ‘fun’ in fundraising for Great Ormond Street's face-to-face recruiters
Howard Lake | 26 August 2003 | News
A groundbreaking marketing campaign drawn up using cognitive science techniques is set to raise bags of money for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.
Using its cutting-edge computer programme, psychographic marketing consultant ESP profiled people who signed up as regular donors to the charity after being recruited in the street and has helped develop a children’s party bag for its face-to-face fundraisers to hand out.
The bag, which combines information about the hospital (GOSH) with fun gifts including a maze game, pen-holder, balloon and a badge, acts as a custom-made psychological trigger to encourage people who sign up to keep their donations coming.
Jim Brackin, ESP’s director of insight, said street-based face-to-face donor recruitment where people set up a regular direct debit to the charity has been a growing phenomenon over the last five years.
He said: “The people who are recruited on the street are worth a great deal to charities and they tend to have a very different profile from other types of donor. However, because it’s all done on the spur of the moment, it’s important to consider ways to reinforce loyalty.
“Our role with GOSHCC was to develop a fulfilment pack to help with retention. We came up with something at the sign-up stage that would endear people to the hospital for the long as well as the short term.”
The experts at ESP used a system called Behavioural Filters to profile the way people process information. This can be used to scientifically predict the way a target audience is likely to behave and to draw up a highly-specific marketing campaign.
Groups of people who had taken up the face-to-face offer were profiled and those who were loyal were compared with those who dropped out. Using this system, ESP could work out how to push people’s buttons to trigger their loyalty.
Brackin said the people who sign up tend to be extroverts with large groups of friends who like doing things for other people and are likely to listen to what their peers have to say. In general, they are intuitive, ‘right brain’ people.
“They don’t like masses of information. They like to get a ‘short, sharp shock’ of information but the traditional fulfilment material used by charities usually has lots and lots of detail,” he said.
“In contrast, the party bag is very tactile and when you open it up there’s lots of interesting, fun things inside. It was designed to give people a big hit of nice feeling rather than trying to rationalise them into being loyal.
“Things like the pen-holder and the maze might hang around on their desk at work and act as a constant trigger rather than being put away in a drawer and forgotten about.”
Catherine Lundy, head of donor marketing at GOSHCC, said: “We’re very excited about this party bag because it’s so different from anything that’s been done before. Our fundraisers are very proud to be handing them out and they say that members of the public are responding very well to them. When they see other people in the street with the bags, it sparks their interest and they want to know more.”
Ends August 2003
For more information contact Mary Hamblyn at Spa Public Relations on 01242 245789 or
ma**@sp****************.com
Note to editors:
ESP applies cognitive science to marketing campaigns on a consultative basis. It uses a scientific approach to bring an objective framework to traditionally subjective areas of the marketing industry.
Central to their work is MAP (Motivation and Attitude Profile), a psychographic profiling system that uses the structure of cognitive science to repurpose advertising with an enhanced understanding of why people do what they do and how best to influence them.
The company was established in December 2000 and has predominantly blue-chip clients, including AA, Friends Provident and CenterParcs. The key personnel are a team of three cognitive science experts who were previously colleagues at direct marketing agency Amherst. They have a unique skill set incorporating hypnotherapy, behavioural psychology and neuro linguistic programming in addition to marketing communications.
Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital
Great Ormond Street Hospital in London cares for 90,000 children each year from all over the world suffering from rare, complex and often life-threatening conditions. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity aims to raise over £20 million this year to keep the hospital at the cutting edge of paediatric medicine.
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Mary Hamblyn
Tel: 01242 245789
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.