The Salvation Army iPhone App
I've found another great example of a charity using the iPhone to engage volunteers. This time its the Salvation Army (over in the US). They are offering people a chance to download a bell (you can get yours here). A downloadable bell on a telephone…
A little housekeeping
Regular readers will notice that there have been a few changes on the blog. First off, I’ve moved the navigation column over to the left. The people at Bluefrog who know more about this than I do have shown me some rather powerful eye-tracking studies…
How not to do PowerPoint
I’ve been both sides of the laptop for a fair number of PowerPoint presentations in my life. I’ve not seen many of these techniques but sadly, I have seen some of them. Instructional and funny video from Don McMillan. Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT…
Show donors what they can do. Not what they can’t
When it comes to creating appeals, there is a natural assumption that high numbers generate high levels of income. If many thousands of people are at risk or in danger, logic would dictate that donors will give more money than if just one person is…
Integrate your media channels
Jennie Yorke and Richard Turner from ActionAid have a great presentation on Slideshare. It shows how the charity’s approach to recruiting child sponsors has changed over time. In the three years up to 2005, 70% of all child sponsors were recruited through three channels. Today…
How to come up with great ideas
Where do great ideas come from? I don’t know. John Cleese gets his from Mr Ken Levinshaw who lives in Swindon. He gets them from Mildred Spong who lives on the Isle of Wight. She refuses to say where she gets them from. I know…
Simplify
Hey Whipple, Squeeze this! is one of my favourite books on advertising. Whether you work for an agency or employ one you should read it. It will point out what you are doing wrong and show you how you can do things better. It was…
Where do you hide the good stuff?
As I first walk through the doors of a charity, I often find myself having an Indiana Jones type moment. It’s nothing to do with dodging boulders or poison darts. What comes to mind is the closing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark –…
Oxfam getting back to basics on TV
I wasn't that impressed with the old lady using her special vomiting power to fight the giant spider of injustice that featured in Oxfam's Be Humankind campaign last year. The huge distance from their cartoon to the real world was a big jump that I…
The misdirected power of the brand
Some people think I don’t like branding. They are wrong. I love great brands. The trouble is that I don’t think many charity brands are very well managed and there are a growing number of pieces of research that serve to confirm my beliefs. I…
