Creator / originator

Trond Backer and Jon Harald Balsnes of Strømme Foundation and Christian Norland, from the agency Recommended.

Summary / objectives

Fattigdomsbekjemper is Strømme Foundation’s offer to donors who wish to give their general support to the organisation. A focused and distinct communication will engage members, meeting the target market where they are and offering them specific preferences and the inspiration to buy in to ‘their’ cause. Through chosen marketing channels the objective is to create a sense of ‘must belong' to the poverty busters.

The primary target group is defined as socially engaged, involved Norwegian citizens, aged 20-35 years old. This group includes former donors from the Strømme Foundation’s database. The main geographical focus is in the southern part of Norway (Østlandet, Vestlandet, Sørlandet), but through new media such as web, blogs and SMS, anyone, anywhere, could become a ‘fattigdomsbekjemper’.

It is easy to become a ‘fattigdomsbekjemper’. Just send an SMS (text message) with the amount you wish to donate on a regular monthly basis and your T-shirt size. After this, you can choose to follow the work of Strømme Foundation and fattigdomsbekjemper, either actively or passively, on the Internet, through blogs, SMS and other media.

Background

Strømme Foundation is Norway’s largest professional organisation working in micro finance in developing countries and is very highly-rated. But the charity is not widely known in Norway. We needed something different, something that would stop people in their tracks and make them realise that the Strømme Foundation plus micro finance will mean less poverty. As Strømme Foundation’s brand is not very strong in Norway, we needed something that would get attention and attract the target group in a new way.

Special characteristics

Use of the word ‘fattigdomsbekjemper’ as something you are, something you do. This will be a movement. Our symbol is a focused and motivated sheep – a group that no longer wishes to follow the massive herd, but will start their own flocks of sheep against poverty. The symbol gives a ‘stop’ effect and in Norway is an effective ‘ice-breaker’.

Influence / impact

We will use a selected group of well-known, socially engaged celebrities in Norway (chosen carefully to be the ‘right’ people). Sportsmen and women, musicians, authors, actors, etc. These people will be an example for others to follow.

Details

We carefully launched the concept as a group on Facebook in mid September 2007. After just four days we had over 200 members.

Costs

NOK 200,000, so far.

Results

See test details. We have just started, but already have approximately 600 members of fattigdomsbekjemper on Facebook and it’s still growing fast. The number of new donors is now 200 plus, and growing each day. These are new regular (long-term) donors, committed to give every month.

Merits

This is something new and different. This is target marketing, we are creating a ‘cool’ movement in what, for us, is a new target group, communicating with them using new, alternative marketing channels.