Campanie
General Information:
Strategic approach:
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In the winter of 2021 Samusocial Romania, the only organization fighting homelessness in Romania was hitting rock bottom, facing closure. Even before Covid-19, homelessness has been an increasing and invisible problem in Romania. In Bucharest, there are around 5,000 people living on the streets, and there has never been a consistent state-developed plan for them. Among the general population, health problems and kids dominate public empathy and donations, so Samusocial has historically fought for attention against commercial brands and 88,000 equally deserving NGOs. Then Covid-19 came, and Samusocial Romania unexpectedly found itself in an even frailer context. The pandemic stole all attention, making every other problem on Earth irrelevant. 1 in 2 Romanians donated to institutions, hospitals & medical care fighting the global life-threatening health problem. Homelessness continued to face public indifference. The primary source of income for Samusocial was companies, which redirected the 3.5% income tax to the organization. However, a greenwashing pandemic has been emerging too: the companies started to redirect the income tax to in-house company NGOs, crashing Samusocial’s B2B model. So winter was coming, the most challenging time of the year, when the homeless needed help the most. Samusocial lacked the resources to survive. The NGO was running out of salaries money, facing activity cease, employee demoralization and losing raison d'etre. Samusocial's main goal was to raise enough money to continue its activity and continue helping homeless people make it through another winter. Business objective: Quick inflow from individual donations: in November and December 2021, raise donations of 3000 euros. From an operational perspective, Samusocial needs 6000 euros to ensure the functioning of the organization. In the months of November, and December 2021, before the campaign, Samusocial already had 3000 euros, and knew it can raise around 1500 euros - that was the benchmark, the sum raised in the same period last year, November, and December 2020). The trouble was that now the NGO needed to raise TWICE as much in order to survive. Communication objective: With NO MEDIA BUDGET increase exposure and attention to break the indifference barrier, double the people reached by our communication: from 1 million people reached mainly through Facebook, before the campaign, reach 2 million people by the End of the Year, 2021 Approach: Since raising money through companies' income tax became a losing battle, Samusocial had to move its attention to the people of Bucharest. But a lot of them became a cause too, being affected by the pandemic, with almost 500k people being in technical unemployment in March 2020 and budgets per household shrinking by 38%. So, in the winter of 2021, we turned our attention to the wealthier people of Bucharest. Those unaffected by the pandemic, the mid to high class without financial stability worries, with jobs and homes at no risk, but the opposite: those with money to spend, or with spending plans. Self-made or born into money, their attitude towards the homeless lacks empathy. They blame homeless people for their condition. When they donate, they do it directly on the streets, not through an NGO, just to make homeless people go away in the traffic or from terrace tables. They think money is a temporary solution. They also approach donations with disbelief, knowing of networks of beggars that exploit homeless people, like in the 2002 pop culture movie, Filantropica. We targeted their attention in a spending moment. Home has always been the centrepiece of Romanians' lives. It's our most prized possession and goal, one that grew in importance during Covid-19. While some have no home, a pandemic frenzy made many others act on improving, renting or buying a better home, keeping the construction materials and real estate prices high as a result. The reason: during Covid-19 our homes had to play essential new roles - the place to work, relax, workout - without being ready for that. Spending more time at home, people became aware of homes' shortcomings and rushed to invest in better homes. Redecorating increased by 32% according to Capital.ro. New home buying increased by 10% in May 2021 versus the same period in 2020, and the renting budget by 13% (September 2020), showing that people were contemplating moving into bigger, better homes and spending approximately 8 minutes per day on real estate websites. |
Execution:
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