A few months ago Gerhard Pieterse, the executive director of Autism Western Cape, committed himself to voluntary imprisonment as a fund-raising exercise in support of Autism. With the goal of reaching R1 000 000 (about $101 000) in raised funds. The limited marketing budget of the Jail4Bail campaign was allocated to much as you would expect: using traditional press releases, public relations and relying on conventional media to spread the word.
After 60 days of Pieterse’s voluntary imprisonment traditional marketing methods had successfully raised half the target amount for the Jail4bail campaign, roughly R 8 300 ($ 810.91) per day.
The only communication tools jail4bail had at his disposal was a mobile phone and a computer with a 3G internet connection. As he was imprisoned within a jail cell constructed in a shopping mall near the MIH SWAT Cape Town office, I would pass him by on my way to grab a bite to eat for lunch every day.
As with most offline charity campaigns Jail4bail had the usual budgetary and location constraints. There was no budget to enlist the services of an online marketing company and on day 60 the shopping mall only allowed Jail4bail to remain for another 14 days.
Everyday I when passing by the Jail4bail I introduced Pieterse to a few Web 2.0 services us digital natives take for granted namely: twitter, flickr, friendeed and then feedalizr that allowed him to update all the aforementioned social software services from a central location on his desktop. As all these services were new and foreign to him he asked why he should use these online tools. The answer was simple: join the conversation. As many South Africans of his generation do not fully grasp the power of social media I suggested he watch Kevin Kelly’s TED Talk: The Next 5000 days of the web.
Immediately after Jail4bail started using feedalizr to engage with the users on friendfeed, flickr and twitter a paradigm shift occurred: users on every social media platform in South Africa started ‘talking’ about Jail4bail, the same users who usually do not even mention HIV/AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis or heart disease that are usually more publicized. From a mere 200 Google search results for the term jail4bail on day 60 to over 17 000 search results on day 74. This has now stabilized to 11 800. A memetic brand was born that received both positive and negative attention that continues 3 months after the Jail4ail campaign has ended. The Jail4bail campaign never reached the R 1 000 000 mark but did manage to raise a further R 150 000 ($15 199.05) in 14 days, an average of R 10 714 ($1 085.61) per day. A 29% increase in the daily average compared to the 60 days prior to using feedalizr and the associated social media services.
This is only one of the many factors that assisted Autism Western Cape to raise awareness and funds using social media to support a traditional PR campaign. This demonstrates the power of social media not to only raise awareness but also empower charities like Autism Western Cape enabling them to extend the lives of their fund raising campaigns beyond the time and monetary limits normally associated with it.
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November 30th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
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