Grassroots Marketing Campaign and Philanthropy

Elle Wilson

Overview of ConceptWe designed a grassroots marketing campaign to promote the FEED

brand and its work through a Spoon campaign comprised of a photo contest, scavenger hunt, and food drive. We used Spoon as an outlet to get the word out about our new chapter and FEED campaign through a headline article, a Facebook event, and multiple social media posts. We were able to get 8 local restaurants and a local food bank to sponsor our philanthropic efforts. The photo contest was designed as a scavenger hunt where students would search for the designated spoon member carrying the iconic FEED tote that day and then snap a photo with the bag and post it to either Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #FEEDdurham. We anticipated the challenge of spreading the word beyond our personal friend groups so we really tried to diversify the spokespersons between grades and organizational involvement. The person/post with the most likes at the end of the day won the FEED tote, but in order to win a free meal at a sponsoring restaurant they also needed to donate at least 7 food items to our food drive. In order to collect as much food as possible, students could also pledge to host their own food drive with their sorority/dorm/athletic team/student organization for a larger prize. We also placed food drive collection boxes in 5 major student centers and dining halls around Duke’s campus for students and faculty that wanted to just donate food.

Goals• Build Spoon’s brand awareness on campus as an awesome

and innovative new food community• Build FEED’s presence on campus not only as a cool

fashion brand but also as an innovative humanitarian concept

• Collect as much food as possible for the local food bank in Durham, a community with over 96,000 individuals who are at risk of hunger.

• Introduce a completely new marketing strategy on campus, using the participants in our contest as our own guerrilla marketing team to spread the word about our FEEDdurham campaign through their personal social media accounts and encouraging them to engage with the mission of FEED by donating food.

Targets

We planned to measure our success by the number of Facebook users reached through our campaign (which we are able to measure using Facebook Analytics), the number of times our FEEDdurham article was viewed on Duke’s Spoon website (Google Analytics), and the number total likes linked to our hashtag #FEEDdurham. Most importantly, we wanted to collect as much food as possible for the local food bank so we set the goal of collecting at least 2 full donation boxes.

Timeline Once we solidified our campaign idea, we began reaching out to food banks to find a partner and then the Duke administration to set up boxes around campus. We contacted local restaurants to see if they would be interested in sponsoring our campaign and received over $500 in gift card donations for the winners of our competition. A Facebook event was created for the campaign a few days in advance and details were released on Spoon University’s Duke page as well as through flyers posted around campus. The actual photo contest and food drive occurred during the week of November 3-9.  5 FEED totes were ordered a week in advanced and distributed to those who volunteered within Spoon to carry the FEED tote for a day. Prizes were awarded to the daily winners in exchange for food donations. Additional food donations were collected throughout the week through donation bins around campus and once the boxes were filled, they were donated to the Central North Carolina Food Bank.

Instagram Snapshots

Promotional Flyers

Contest Instructions

http://duke.spoonuniversity.com/2014/10/28/win-free-meals-durhams-best-restaurants/

Facebook Snapshots

https://www.facebook.com/events/741009835997446/

Food Donations!

Over 150 pounds!

Results• Our campaign was primarily organized and run through Facebook,

Instagram, and the Duke page of Spoon University’s website. The featured article on Duke’s Spoon University page received 772 page views during the week of the campaign and the 2 days before. The campaign’s photos and the hashtag #FEEDdurham reached 14,368 people on Facebook through post shares and likes. Photos linked to our hashtag earned 4,333 likes on Instagram alone, including a feature Instagram with the FEED tote by Duke’s very own Student Body President! Overall, we had 150+ direct participants and hundreds of supporters. With boxes placed at major student hubs and by encouraging participants to donate in the hopes of winning dinner at some of Durham’s finest restaurants, we collected over 150 pounds of non-perishables for the Durham branch of the Central & Eastern North Carolina Food Bank.

Learnings• The biggest lesson we learned was that college students have to be incentivized in order to break

their daily routines. College students are major creatures of habit (ie. they like to stick to the process of class, homework, sleep, repeat). We had to design a reward that was so desirable and a campaign that was so unique, students were willing to break their respective routines and seek out the FEED tote on campus. Our strategy of engaging multiple social circles and using them as our own guerilla marketers greatly expanded our reach. We saw the most feedback when friends encouraged other friends to participate because it fostered an environment of teamwork and the goal seemed more feasible. Also, college students are very hesitant to post anything on their social media accounts if they think it will make them look “uncool.” Once more people started posting and FEEDdurham photos clogged everyone’s news feed, individuals were more willing to continue the trend and contribute a post. There were times when we were frustrated because the focus shifted from combating hunger in Durham to winning free dinners because the social media contests grew super heated! Although this was a sign of our campaign succeeding, we made sure that the end of the campaign focused heavily on the donation of food and we think this brought the campaign back to our original goals.

• We also learned how universities function as a bureaucracy. Our ability to seek out and contact the correct people went a long way to make our campaign a reality, not to mention a huge success. That being said, universities are also very open and supportive to student initiatives and offer a great venue to experiment with different techniques without too much risk. College students may be lazy, but they also care a lot about the world’s issues and their desire to make an impact is unmatched. Therefore, the most critical step in a successful marketing campaign is first grabbing the individual’s finite attention, because once you introduce them to a relevant and engaging concept, there’s a very slim chance that they will not act on it.