Back in October 2008, I wrote a post about charitable organizations embracing donations via text message to help meet their end of year fundraising goals. This week the island nation of Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake and two high profile charities, the Red Cross and Yele (founded by Haitian musician Wyclef Jean), urged those wishing to send aid to make a donation not via check, email, or even online donations, instead they asked for one simple item – a text message.
By text messaging a special code to the Red Cross or Yele you could make a donation to relief efforts in Haiti with the push of just a few keys on your phone. Last week I wrote about some of the exciting mobile technologies unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and its clear that the mobile trend is not just for tech, it has spread to non-profit.
The Red Cross text message donations are being managed by a company called mGive. mGive’s chief executive, Tony Aiello, told Jenna Wortham of the New York Times, “Catastrophic fund-raising is different from the everyday fund-raising that we help facilitate. This is a huge tragedy, and we simply hope to help provide relief. . . Mobile giving is currently outpacing the early days of online giving.”
How popular is the donation method exactly?
In an interview with MSNBC’s Suzanne Choney, Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless said, “All mobile texters in the United States have contributed $4 million to the Red Cross Haiti earthquake relief effort, the largest outpouring of charitable support by texting in history — by far.”
Nelson went on to say, “Previous donating-via-text message efforts raised $400,000 after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and $200,000 after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by all wireless customers in the U.S.”
And it doesn’t end there. To get out the word about donating via text, concerned individuals posted the text message codes on a plethora of social networks, making the plea viral.
Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable wrote a post today praising the Red Cross’ decision to use mobile and social media to raise awareness and more importantly, to raise funds. Van Grove said, “The Red Cross’s involvement in the relief effort is to be commended. Not only did it immediately set up the simplest donation method possible, but its social media presence and outreach, when combined with the State Department’s involvement, has turned this into a viral funding initiative, topping Twitter trends and inspiring action.”
This week it has become clear the most effective method of raising funds is to reach people where they are: on their phones and on social networks. When launching a fundraising campaign, in the wake of a crisis or otherwise, fundraisers should consider that their staring point is in fact mobile.
Pizza Hut isn’t a Stranger to Creating Publicity Stunts out of New “Positions” (2007’s VP of Pizza Campaign)
Seemingly undaunted, and hopefully encouraged, by the the recent fallout surrounding Domino’s aptly named “booger-gate,” Pizza Hut (YUM) officially announced its search for the “Twintern” today, after Stephanie Clifford noted the open casting call in the New York Times a few days ago. As Bob Kraut, vice president for marketing communications at the company noted to the Times:
“They’ll be our social media journalist, chronicling in 140 characters or less what’s going on at Pizza Hut.”
With so many companies trying to figure out a social media strategy along with best practices for using tools like Twitter, the idea of a Twintern seems like a win-win. As long as Pizza Hut understands that it’s just the first step in getting their feet wet within the Twitter and blogo-spheres, and they’re not a “journalist” just because they’re creating content, or micro-content in this case.
Pizza Hut, isn’t disclosing what they’ll be paying the Twintern to manage their new Twitter handle (Already 1,000 plus followers), but they’ll likely find a very talented and capable individual (Read: Their IT people are about to get inundated with applications) for a bargain-basement price. More importantly, they’re creatively using the “casting call” as a social media publicity stunt to heighten their mind-share in the space.
While content creation will be a big aspect of the new Pizza Hut gig, Clifford rightly notes that social media monitoring may be the more important job responsibility:
“The Twintern must also play social-media defense, monitoring Twitter for any mentions of the brand and alerting superiors whenever anything negative about the Hut is being said. (Applicants should study last week’s YouTube gross-out video posted by Domino’s employees, which was quickly passed around Twitter, to understand why.)”
The Domino’s case study is yet the latest example in a line of recent PR fire drills which have bubbled up from social media platforms as companies failed to respond in a timely matter (Motrin, Amazon).
While Domino’s has done a lot of things right after missing the YouTube video for the first 24-48 hours (pictured above – as it has been taken down), the delay in reaction put them in very a deep hole. A hole that wouldn’t have been nearly as big if they had quickly identified the video through Radian6 or a similar service and responded quickly within the YouTube community and through Twitter.
Since then, they have done a good job of following the crisis communications’ handbook by creating their own YouTube video response (below) with CEO Patrick Doyle and fostering conversations with their new Twitter handle (100+ more followers than Pizza Hut).
However, while the fallout from “booger-gate” has created an “opportunity” to grow Domino’s social media presence, Pizza Hut finds themselves in the more enviable position: cautiously observing and moving slowly into the social media space rather than falling in backwards in reaction to a crisis situation.
