Mike Colling & Company wins Gold
at DMA Awards December 2009

What’s this all about?
We are proud to announce that the following campaign won a Gold in the Best Results of 2009 category at the DMA Awards on Wednesday 9 December.

Our Challenge
In the summer of 2007 RSPCA were facing a long term decline in response rates and, as a consequence, they were recruiting fewer regular givers. 

Together with MC&C and creative agency Whitewater they set themselves three key challenges:

• How can we reverse this long term decline in response and return on investment?

• How can we recruit younger and more affluent donors so as to future proof the organisation?

• How can we recruit regular givers so as to have dependable income streams

The Insight
The team identified four new audiences, all younger and more affluent than core RSPCA supporters, but all motivated to support animal welfare causes.

New thinking underpinned our approach to these new audiences

• Firstly, that they were motivated by animals, in the same way our traditional audience was

• Secondly, that we were not reaching them with current recruitment activity

• Thirdly, that we were confusing them by running a number of different campaigns with a range of messages

• Fourthly ,that by asking immediately for a regular gift we were depressing response

• And finally, that these new audiences wanted to respond via new channels

Our Solution

• We created “The Biggest Animal Rescue” campaign showing the increasing numbers of animals coming into rescue centres, and the increasing need for support.

• This launched with an integrated media campaign using a combination of television, media inserts, door drops, direct mail, search and online display activity.  The total schedule was planned to reach audiences not reached by the RSPCA for several years.

• The creative message was integrated across all channels, all singing in harmony rather than carrying separate messages.

• We made a radical leap for a charity campaign by not asking for money – rather, we just asked the audience to respond and “support us”.

• And finally we added new response channels. Traditionally we had asked donors to call or write to us. We recognised that these new donors are more at home with digital media, and we moved to text and online as the primary response channels

The Results
We launched the campaign in the week that Lehman’s collapsed, the height of the credit crisis, however the campaign reached more potential supporters than in the previous 12 months.

• Response rates to core media quadrupled compared with the average response for prior campaigns in 2008

• ROI doubled, with donors giving higher average gifts

• Two additional impacts were seen:
• non integrated activity (door drops and direct mail) response rates were uplifted by more than 25%
• spontaneous awareness of RSPCA rose from 23% pre campaign to 28% post campaign

• The campaign was immediately rolled out, and has seen sustained activity through 2009.