Managing for Social Impact - Creativity Marketing Centre

Managing for Social Impact
Paula Aravena
Ya Li
Susan Liu
Marisela Martinez
Antonella Raffo
If we ask the main top managers of small, medium and big companies what is the
most effective form of marketing most of them may answer word of mouth. Word
of mouth is not a new concept, but what happens when this is taken to another
level? What happens when word of mouth goes to World of Mouth? People are
talking increasingly about your brand and taking more and more prominence in
brand evolution. The global connectivity that contemporary organisations are
facing nowadays helps to push them to take into consideration new
stakeholders. As Masters candidates we strongly believe that non-profit
organizations like Gawad Kalinga should follow the same rules in order to be
successful at targeting young adults. The purpose of this project is to understand
the attitude, behaviour of students in the 3 main universities in London and the
best ways to get in touch with them and engage them with options to
volunteering activities. For that, first of all we will look at the importance of
social media platforms to interact with the group that we are targeting and the
current situation of Gawad Kalinga in that area. Secondly, we will explore the
current networks of Gawad Kalinga in the student environment in London and
how to take advantage of it. And finally, we will propose a realistic solution in
order to improve Gawad Kalinga’s awareness and attractiveness among young
students in the UK.
1. Importance of strong Social Media platforms
Erik Qualman’s book, Socialnomics: How social media transform the way we live
and do businesses, explains that the great thing about technologies like Twitter
(microblogging) for businesses is that it is a tool that enables a company to
search for a brand name like Gawad Kalinga and see what hundreds of people
are saying about it. Good companies do this, but tech-savvy companies take it
one step further and act on it. As you can see on Table A, looking for the hashtag
#gawadgkalinga on Twitter we can see that at least once a day someone around
the world is talking about the foundation. Most of them are coming from
Philippines and mostly from young people as well. That confirms our theory that
Twitter as a social media platform is a good and powerful tool to get in touch
with young people.
TABLE A: #gawadkalinga on Twitter June 22nd, 2014.
In terms of performance on search engines, the Google Trends tool enables us to
understand searching for specific topics in specific countries. If we look for
“England” and keywords like “volunteering” and “social works” we can find that
the main times of a year when people look for these keywords are in May,
October and November. This is a key finding for Gawad Kalinga in order to
understand potential windows for the launch of their campaign.
Currently, Gawad Kalinga’s official facebook has 220,587 fans (by June 22nd,
2014).
Gawad Kalinga UK has 91 fans (by June 22nd, 2014) with the last post on March
19th 2014. We propose to have one Facebook page where the information and
updates are more consolidated rather than having more without being engaging
and attractive.
What we want to say with that is:
- Having several community managers across the world using the same
platform
- For international relevant information make it available for every fans
across the globe in order to reinforce this idea of “international
community”.
- For specific information, like local campaigns, the assigned community
manager should post the information filtering by country (free tool
available at Facebook).
This strategy will reinforce the idea of global social vision with a strong support
worldwide, but focusing at the same time on local details. Gawad Kalinga UK
should take advantage of the good practices that have been taking place in other
countries in order to have those as a guideline.
Gawad Kalinga has a lot of good content on Youtube, where there are several
videos reaching more than 1,000 viewers. However, there are barriers between
the conversions of viewers to subscribers (only 394 subscribers by June 22nd,
2014). In order to improve this number, we recommend to include a 10s copy
engaging people to subscribe at the end of every video. A really nice way to do it
is filming 10s videos with children from Philippines saying a short claim like “if
you want to know more about Gawad Kalinga please subscribe below”.
We believe social media should be the core of the communication strategy to the
young adult student audience. Daily messages to followers instead of twice a
month posts through global platforms like Twitter and Facebook can increase
involvement and awareness of the target customer to the brand in the UK
market.
2. Networking
Another way of promoting and creating awareness of Gawad Kalinga is through
the already existing network of students that have already been involved with
the organization. They are the ones who have a deeper understanding and can
act as ambassadors of Gawad Kalinga by sharing their experiences with other
students. The ambassadors can be the key contact person to reach student clubs
in relevant universities by promoting GK through their personal experience.
Currently, we have contacted three UK students who have been involved with
Gawad Kalinga in order to share their experience and explain to them what the
ambassador role would be and how they should be involved.
Through research focusing in London, we have found students clubs which
promote:
- Cultural events of Philippines and South East Asia
Furthermore, we have found universities based in London which have student
clubs and centres dedicated to promoting South East Asian culture in general.
For example:
- The School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) has a centre of South
East Asian studies dedicated to support for volunteering abroad,
internship and research – on field for Master and PhD students.
- London Business School has one student club focused on volunteering
and another one for students interested in the South East Asia.
- London School of Economics is one of the few universities that have a
student club focused only on Philippines culture.
If the ambassadors implement to contacting all the student associations
mentioned above, the impact of creating brand awareness will be significantly
positive.
In order to promote Gawad Kalinga, the ambassadors can participate in some
events such as workshops, speeches to attract more students.
After implementing the viral video, which will be explained in the coming
section, the ambassadors will promote the video through their own network
and be eager to talk about Gawad Kalinga and their personal experience.
There are two existing Gawad Kalinga Internet webpages: the official site and the
global one, which gives more details about the presence in different countries
worldwide and the activities they are currently running.
Both websites have the same layout and design in the headline; which is clear
and appropriate. The main tone of both webpages is grey and orange, which
respectively mean maturity & neutrality and emotion & energy, in terms of
colours.
After clicking through the webpage, the content is consistent when referring to
the Gawad Kalinga mission, volunteer programmes, and general information, etc.
However the official webpage has more images and banners that change
approximately every 10 seconds making the webpage look more dynamic and
attract the visitors.
It also highlights the different programmes that Gawad Kalinga has been
involved in the Philippines and other relevant information about Philippines,
news release, etc.
We would suggest that the global Gawad Kalinga site replicates the idea of
displaying more images and provide shortcuts to interesting sections to attract
more people.
Another idea would be to offer the opportunity to interact through contacting an
ambassador of a country in order to get personalised answers.
Images below show the home page of the official (on the left) and the European
(on the right) website.
3. Understanding your market
The model above is drawn in order to understand the variables that would
influence a UK university student’s behaviour of
1) joining a volunteering or social internship program in the Philippines
2) being an advocate for the program
As is shown in the model, the influencing variables are:
Budget;
Schedule;
Safety concern;
Net Promoter Score (willingness to recommend to friends/family);
Past experience
Preference of persuading message style
Social media interaction habits
A survey is then designed to test the variables mentioned and their relationship
in between (See Appendix for the questionnaire). With the result of the survey,
we will be able to define the target audience of our campaign, what kind of
advertisement and video best to implement, and when and where to
communicate the message.
4. Recommendation and deliveries
Through benchmarking with virally successful videos for social causes, we have
identified several elements that contribute to the engagement with mass
audiences.
First of all, story-telling is an important aspect that engages the audience and
acquires their attention, which is vital in the digital age when there is an
overload of information and distractions are abundant. There are several
approaches to how a story can be told, to appeal emotionally or to reason with
factual information, either in an entertaining tone of voice or more touching.
Emotional content is used more commonly in videos for social causes, for
reasons that issues of humanity appeal strongly to touching the heart, but at the
same time some information needs to be provided to consequently changing the
mind. Testimonials from people actually involved in the projects are also
especially appealing to the audience are they can personally relate to the
experiences shared and feel closer to the issues that usually seem very distant.
Once the audience is engaged, they need to be activated to share the video. The
content of the video needs to be of relevance to them and to the social network
they spread this story to. The video shared by each individual is part of an
identity they present to the public, and people want to align themselves with
something that could be a reflection of their issues of concern, causes worthy of
supporting and eye-opening truths of the world around us. Follow-up content is
needed good way to keep the audience constantly engaged, creating an overall
campaign that expresses the story in different ways to appeal to a greater
audience, initiating interest with an emotionally touching video, followed by a
more educationally inspirational video communicating the facts, then perhaps
some entertaining content as a more humoristic approach. The ease of sharing
such content is an important factor to allow for viral distribution and connecting
to the various channels that are most popular in the student population and also
adapting the same story from the video to individual graphic advertisement that
can be shared through Instagram and further applied to flyers etc. creating an
overall campaign around the cause.
Finally, through linking the digital content to real-life actions to activate the
audience to possibly participate physically in campaign events by providing
relevant links and information as a portal of access to prompt those interested
for future contact points.
The following video was considered by our group as the best-in-class example,
and also the main inspiration for our proposed big idea, to show our student
audience a different world beyond their familiar environment and prompt them
to take action to participate in GK’s projects.
First World Problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxyhfiCO_XQ
What can seem like a big problem in the so called "first world' doesn't even come
close to the day-to-day challenges faced by the billions who live in extreme
poverty. This video highlights the stark contrast in very simple terms.
5. The Proposed Story
Objective: Increase Gawad Kalinga United Kingdom Awareness
Strategy: Show a video where people can understand what the real problems are
in the Philippines community by comparing it with problems that are not as
relevant in life.
Example 1:
22.8 million People are in Slums
I hate it when my garage is blocked
Example 2:
1 out of 6 kids is not in school
8 hours is too long for a class
Example 3:
3 million Child labour in Philippines
I hate not having the latest iPad
Your hand will help to stop these real problems
APPENDIX
Below we include some of the emails we have written to previous UK students
who have been involved with Gawad Kalinga.
Online Survey
Please take about 15 minutes to finish this questionnaire that studies the preference and behavior of students
in the UK towards volunteering and social internship in the Philippines. Collected data will be used for Gawad
Kalinga’s UK market research only. There is absolutely no right or wrong answer; we are interested in what
you really think!
Information will be kept completely confidential and anonymous.
Thank you very much for taking part of our project!
The questions below concern your basic information. Please tick the relevant boxes. (/)
Male
Female
☐
☐
Gender:
<18
18-22
23-27
28-32
33-40
>40
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Age:
Bachelor’s 1st year
Bachelor’s 2nd year
Bachelor’s 3rd year
☐
☐
☐
Bachelor’s 4th year
Master
PhD
☐
☐
☐
Study status:
Social
Science
Business
Law
Engineering
Art & Design
Science
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Area of study:
Please specify your school and major:
The questions below help us understand your behavior and preference in volunteering.
No
Yes
(Please answer only the next
question and skip to question 7)
☐
☐
Yes
No
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Have you ever participated in
volunteer work?
If not, please specify the reason:
1. If not, would you consider going
one day?
2. How many times have you
0
1-3
4-6
7-10
>10
volunteered in a foreign country?
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Europe
North
America
South
America
Africa
Asia
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Strongly
disagree
Disagree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Agree
Strongly
agree
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Strongly
disagree
Disagree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Agree
Strongly
agree
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Social
media
Friends &
family
School
Advertisement
Others
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
CV
addition
Help others
Social
See different
things
Accomplishment
Others
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Health/h
ygiene
Financial
Safety
Time
Trust
Accessibility
Others
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
3. Which continent(s) have you
taken part in volunteer work?
(Please tick all that apply)
4. Volunteering has changed your
life
5. You would recommend your
friends and family members to
participate in volunteer work
6. Which channel(s) do you acquire
information on volunteer jobs?
(Please tick all that apply)
7. What reasons attract
you most to a volunteer
program (Please tick all
that apply)
8. What would be the
barrier(s) for you to
participate in a
volunteer program in the
Philippines? (Please tick
all that apply)
9. How long in advance do you plan
for your summer vacation?
More than 6
months
ahead
4-6 months
ahead
2-3 months
ahead
1 months
ahead
Less than
1 month
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☐
☐
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10. Please describe previous volunteer jobs (time/place/mission) if you have done any:
Time:
Place:
Mission(s):
Feedback:
The section below is about your opinions concerning videos made by NGOs or Social enterprises. Before
answering the questions, please watch the short clips from the following link:
First World Problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxyhfiCO_XQ
The 1st
The 2nd
None
☐
☐
☐
Which video do you consider more
touching?
Which one would motivate you to
actually participate in a volunteering
or internship programme?
You always need a lot of emotional
push to be motivated.
You prefer to have more facts to feel
reassured
What are the actions after you see a
video that touches you? (Tick all that
apply)
Which social media channel(s)
would you share the video through?
(Tick all that apply)
Where would you expect to acquire
access for such videos? (Tick all that
apply)
Strongly
disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly
agree
☐
☐
☐
☐
Strongly
disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
☐
☐
☐
☐
Strongly
disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
“Like” it
Share on
social media
Look for
further
informatio
n
Look for
similar
programmes
None
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Facebook
Twitter
Youtube
Others
I won’t
share
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Billboards
Online adss
Social
media
Campus
Others
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
Strongly
agree
☐
Strongly
agree
Mobile phone
Computer
Tablet
Physical
interaction
Others
☐
☐
☐
☐
☐
What is your main device of
interaction?
Thank you for your time and valuable information provided!
ESCP Europe Msc Marketing and Creativity students