Priaulx Premature Baby Foundation

All local charities are competing in a crowded philanthropic environment competing for donations and support. Creating a cost-effective, impactful, cut through campaign for a charity is always a challenge.

Black Vanilla needed to ensure that we achieved maximum exposure across as many high reach, high impact media platforms as possible, but within a set budget. Maximising their own media channels, and supporting all businesses and individual fundraisers as much as possible to ensure they all had a strong voice in relevant media across the island was vital.  Not only this, but the creative needed to shine.  Tin Squirrel worked closely with the PPBF and Black Vanilla to get the messaging absolutely perfect.

The Premature Baby Foundation approached Black Vanilla to help promote their latest fundraising project.

The objective: to raise £150,000 by 2017 to purchase a property, The Burrow, close to Southampton hospital for local families to stay in when their little one needs critical off-island treatment.

Black Vanilla relished the opportunity to work with such a fantastic cause. We worked closely with the foundation to establish objectives, challenges, budget, considerations and opportunities before putting forward a detailed annual marketing communications plan.

Using the talented Tin Squirrel for creative and Black Vanilla’s marketing expertise, the campaign invited people the chance to buy a virtual brick to help build this property – together. A multi-channel media plan across Island FM, direct mail with the Guernsey Post Office, social media and video content, the Christmas markets, the Name The Bunny pre-school competition and the back of a bus was implemented. Approximately £10,000 was spent on advertising, all of which was maximised through associated public relations and social media activity.

Oodles of editorial was generated across press, all local radio stations, and news sites online. This included the PPBF website which had a review of content. The campaign involved negotiating rates, setting the strategy, the timings, and the media selection needed to allow us to communicate all the details of the campaign, regularly and clearly with impact. The objective; to raise awareness of The Burrow and encourage locals to connect to the cause instantly and buy a brick.

In the first three months of implementing an integrated marketing plan with engaging creative, The Burrow had raised £70,000 versus the £7,000 raised since its inception.

Bricks were bought through a direct response to the envelope leaflet drop or through the PPBF’s website PayPal system where we asked people to tell us how they heard about the campaign as part of the monitoring process.  With Paypal, we were able to effectively measure the channels that were the most successful. The direct mail to 23,000 homes and businesses along with the campaign on Island FM were the most successful. This was shortly followed by social media.

Website: Black Vanilla’s campaign created a 435% increase in site visitors within one month. (October 16 vs November 16).

Facebook: 116% increase in social media likes since Black Vanilla has taken over the management of their Facebook page.

Editorial coverage: This has been fantastic too. We’ve had 34 pieces in the Guernsey Press in only 12 months.

When we started the campaign in 2015 our objective was to reach £150,000 by 2017. By September 2016, the campaign has reached £193,000, ahead of target and of schedule.