Amplification of charity through social media

The Brief

Starlight Children's Foundation is a children's charity that attempts to brighten the lives of sick children by granting once-in-a-lifetime wishes and providing entertainment in hospitals and hospices throughout theUK. 

It had arranged a 10-week TV series celebrating 25 years of the Starlight Children's Foundation with Channel 5.  It approached Bell Pottinger to use this exposure to grow its social media presence and engagement. They specifically wanted to achieve a 20% uplift in Twitter followers and Facebook 'likes'.

The Approach

After reviewing their existing social media sites, we identified that Starlight needed to use the profile of the programme and featured celebrities to increase its sense of 'cause' online. 

Celebrity ambassadors featured in the series such as Fearne Cotton, Holly Willoughby and Stephen Fry posted support messages on twitter, drawing attention to the charity to their millions of followers.  Short previews of the next episode were also used to drive traffic to their website. 

To gain a more personal connection, more information needed to be shared.  Over the campaign this was delivered through 200 Tweets and Facebook status updates.  This included case studies of children's wishes being granted, allowing followers to see the happiness wishes bring.

Direct donation requests were strategically used throughout the campaign. Donations were made easy by asking people to text 'wish' to a number. 

 A series of tactical details ensured that any interest was captured and converted at every stage.  Including:

• ·         Using @ within celebrity messages
• ·         Links to relevant sections of Starlight's website were used in over 90% of messages,
• ·         Hashtags were used to allow Twitter followers to follow and find conversations

Results

Our approach enabled Starlight to achieve a far higher profile online than they had hoped for.

Starlight wanted a 20% uplift in Facebook likes, we delivered a 35% increase. Looking for a 20% growth in Twitter followers, we delivered more than double this at 44%.

During the 10 week campaign they were mentioned by others over 800 times.  This included tweets from celebrities including @stephenfry and @richardbranson, delivering their message to over 3m people.

Most importantly, during the campaign they saw the number wish requests received treble.  This was particularly valued by the charity, as they find that many parents and children think that the chances of their wishes being considered and realised by the charity is near impossible, which is not true - a perception addressed by the campaign.