Low-cost DRTV campaign for Merlin
Howard Lake | 17 September 2007 | News
Specialist medical charity Merlin is to use direct response TV (DRTV) for the first time in a donor recruitment campaign in November. By using archive footage shot by the charity’s programme workers, it has kept its costs very low.
The advert, produced and edited by charity DRTV specialist THINK-DTV, features three mini-cases studies highlighting the three areas of Merlin’s work: conflict, disasters and healthcare collapse.
THINK-DTV, part of the virtual agency set-up launched by charity sector consultancy THINK Consulting Solutions earlier this year, won the Merlin account after a five-way pitch in July.
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The advert will split test £3 and £5 asks and aims to recruit 400 monthly givers. It will air on a mix of satellite and cable channels, including UK Living, the Performance Channel and Fox News. If successful, it will be rolled out again in 2008, possibly on terrestrial and Freeview channels.
Jindy Pal, Individual Giving Manager at Merlin, said that, although falling TV advertising rates had made a test DRTV campaign more attractive, it was using the archived footage that really made the advert cost-effective.
“You can spend upwards of £100,000 just sending a film crew out to shoot new material”, he said, “and for a test of this size that was just not justified. In fact, I’d never want to spend that amount of money, not when we have shot such great footage over the years ourselves.” Pal estimated that Merlin has 300 hours of usable footage in its archive, along with other footage shot by volunteer and commissioned film makers.
Derek Humphries, creative strategist and director at THINK Consulting Solutions, believes that this low-cost approach to DRTV will see the channel emerge from the preserve of the larger charities.
“I feel certain,” he said, “we are about to see a resurgence of fundraising DRTV campaigns as the financial metrics become more attractive. As it is getting harder and more expensive to recruit donors by mail and door drops – and indeed all traditional recruitment media – so DRTV looks an increasingly attractive option.
But to keep it a cost-effective option, charities need to bring costs under control, and one of the biggest cost centres is getting the raw material. Yet many charities have programme staff in the field equipped with digital cameras, so with a little training they will be able to shoot their own footage.”
Peter Muffet, Director of THINK-DTV added: “By making DRTV so cost effective we are enabling smaller charities to compete with the NSPCC’s of this world.”
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.