Using ideas from paternalistic libertarianism and behavioural economics to design and build choice architectures in digital marketing. The presentation includes a case study for a “digital nudge” with one of our clients, a SaaS company.
Content marketing
10 tips for charities who want to increase their influence and revenues
Are working for a non-profit or a charity? This presentation will show you how to increase your influence and revenues by applying content marketing. It includes a case study of Helplines Partnership, one of UK’s leading charities.
Creating content for SEO
Feline Quanta design, develop and produce exciting and engaging content that supports a digital content strategy. We help our clients publish this content across all their digital channels, including social and email.
Moreover, we work with our client’s marketing and communication teams so that they begin to operate as publishers of content. And we provide tested methodologies, tools and support to produce and publish great content across all media – and thus help drive SEO and search ranking.
Content drives SEO through word of mouth.
Here are some examples of content, that can be shared across all channels and drive an organisations digital content campaign.
Articles. We develop, write and produce articles that explain their science and technology to a wide audience.
Interviews. We conduct and produce interviews with top management and key researchers, in print and in video.
Webinars. We organise, produce and facilitate webinars.
E-books. We produce e-books that explain an organisations’ science and technology.
E-debates. Producing and facilitating debates on the web.
We can help integrate ideas such as the above into interactive newsletters and digital magazines that can be distributed on mobile devices (iPad, etc.), and connect with potential customers and other stakeholders.
We have working collaborations with animators, infographics producers and web designers, and we can cover all of our clients’ needs across all digital content types.
#HelplinesAreHere: creating a slogan for helplines
Feline Quanta have been working with Helplines Partnership, the UK’s association of helplines, over several months. We have delivered communication processes and training, as well as support in executing an integrated digital marketing strategy. This year Helplines Partnership celebrates 25 years of continuous service to its members, to communities, and to UK society at large. It is an important milestone in the history of Helplines Partnership, and one that will culminate in the annual conference on November 7th.
We were asked by our client to design and deliver a communication plan supporting and leading to the event, which we did. One of the main goals of the communication plan was to highlight the role of helplines to a wider audience, including the general public, the media, and policy-makers. So we came up with the idea of the slogan “helplines are here”.
What the slogan represents
Helplines Partnership is a membership organisation whose members are helpline charities, or charities that have helplines. As the organisation takes stock of the journey travelled so far there is one thing that sticks out the most: no matter what happens in the life of each and everyone of us, regardless of government spending cuts and the shrinking of public services, there are a bunch of people who are always there to help: helplines, the members of Helplines Partnership. They, employees and volunteers, are the last resort – and sometimes the first and only resort – for people in need. Often these needs are simple: a piece of information or advice, some help to make better sense of something. But, equally often, needs are of a vital nature. Many of our members provide support to people faced with desperate situations: homelessness, addiction, suicide, loneliness, and illness. No matter who is on the other side, whatever the need, helplines are always there.
This is a powerful and emotional story to convey. To celebrate the essence of what helplines provide to society, as well as the spirit of those who work in helplines, Feline Quanta has suggested he slogan “helplines are here“, to be used for Helplines Partnership annual conference.
We believe that “helplines are here” represents who Helplines Partnership are as an association, as well as what their members stand for. Helplines Partnership has been around for a quarter of a century (read their history). Many changes have taken place in the world over the past 25 years. They have progressed with the times too. Take for instance technology, which has always been a fundamental aspect of helplines’ work. Helplines need telecommunication and information technologies in order to operate effectively and efficiently. Helplines Partnership wants to project the image of innovator and advocate for the early adoption of technology in their sector. Indeed, at the forthcoming annual conference several personalities from the UK charity sector have been invited, to present ideas about the digital transformation of helplines, and what the future will bring. But regardless of the future, or the past, there is one thing that always remains constant: human nature and human needs. The keywords “humanness” and “empathy” were central to devising the slogan. Feline Quanta wanted to connect helplines with what they actually do: talk to people when people need them.
Helplines are all about humans. Technology, however advanced and sophisticated, cannot substitute the human factor in an interaction with someone who is desperate and has no one else to turn to. People in need – as well as those who is not in need yet – must relate helplines with the message that “they are there” – always – to help. This is the message our slogan aspires to communicate to society at large, to policy makers and the media, to anyone who cares about a caring society.
Slogan and digital campaign
Feline Quanta have suggested that the “helplines are here” slogan be used as the them of the arts competition, as well as a hashtag for a social media campaign. By giving a focus and a theme to the arts competition (part of the annual conference), Helplines Partnership will achieve a better response from artists who might be interested to engage and participate.
As a hashtag, #HelplinesAreHere can initiate a conversation and the sharing of stories about helplines, on Twitter and Facebook. Feline Quanta have proposed as part of the communication plan for the annual event, the facilitation of a wider conversation about helplines. We have advised Helpline Partnership to invite everyone to tell their stories, whether they have worked or volunteered for a helpline – or indeed if they were one of the millions of people helped by a helpline in their hour of need.
Helplines Partnership a finalist at the Digital Leaders Awards 2014
Kudos to our client Helplines Partnership for being amongst the finalists at the Digital Leaders Awards 2014 in the NGO Category.
The annual awards celebrate digital innovation as well as uptake of digital technologies and culture in central and local government, NGOs, SMEs, health and start-ups. It is a great indication of trends and thought leaders in digital transformation in the UK.
Feline Quanta Communications are exceptionally proud for Helplines Partnership being a finalist at this prestigious award among hundreds of candidates. We have been working together with the Helplines Partnership executive team, as well as everyone in the organisation, to redesign – and sometimes re-invent-, the organisation’s business model in the age of digital.
By applying best practices in strategic communications we have developed processes that support Helpline Partnership’s marketing communications for products and services, public relations and external relations. SMART Communications are currently being applied across every department, and measuring the impact of communications activities is becoming part of the organisation’s culture. Furthermore, social media activation including the creation of a blog and newsletter, are providing Helplines Partnership with its own media channels with which it engages its members, its staff and volunteers, as well as the many other stakeholders that the UK’s association of helplines interacts with.
In the following months Feline Quanta Communications and Helplines Partnership will embark in the execution of innovative and integrated content marketing across all digital channels. Our common vision is nothing less but for Helplines Partnership to become a leader in digital transformation for UK’s charity sector.
Brand is the emotional signature of an idea
The Pepsi Challenge has shown that Pepsi tastes better than Coke. Nevertheless, Coke consistently sells more than Pepsi. Neuroimaging studies have revealed why this is so: Coke evokes a stronger emotional response in the hyppocampus, the part of the limbic system in the brain that forms long term memories. Long term memories are formed thanks to stories. This is why we humans love narratives, and that is why we can memorise them so well. For millenia, and before the invention of writing, generations of human beings passed information through poetry to their young. Sometimes this poetry was several hundreds of thousand lines long; think of the Iliad or the Mahabharata, or Popol Vuh.
We connect with ideas, not facts. In the context of branding, and idea would be a product, a service, a country, a person, anything. If that idea creates a positive emotional signature to its audience, if we feel good when we see or hear or taste that idea, then the brand is strong. If we feel nothing, or feed negative, then the brand needs to do a lot of work.
But what is an “idea”? It is not the product, or the service, or the country, or the person. Ideas form from stories people say about the object of interest (product, service, etc.). As marketers we aim to create and encourage story-telling about the brand we want to promote. If we achieve that, and these are good stories, then we have achieved a positive emotional response (or “signature”) every time the brand is talked about. And that should be our goal.
Digital media provide us with interactive ways for engaging with people. Successful digital branding is all about telling and sharing stories about the brand.
Story-telling and digital branding
The art of story telling is as ancient as our species. Neuroscience has shown that our cognitive systems are wired for stories; indeed that it is through stories that our memories function. When we see something, or hear, or smell, or touch, or taste, our memory retrieves contextual information about the stimulus and builds a “narrative” about it. This is how we get to recognise and categorise what the stimulus is all about, and decide how to respond to it.
We can reverse engineer this cognitive process and ask ourselves how can we build recognisable brands that make people want to relate to them. Let me explain here that by “brand” I do not necessarily mean a commercial brand. It could be a charity, a scientific research organisation, a political party, a country, or a person – or anyone or anything that desires to be identified in positive terms by society at large. The key to building a brand is story-telling. If one can weave a compelling, emotive story around their brand, then people will react to it in a positive way. They will be able to identify with it. Importantly too, they will be able to “tell the story” to their friends, and therefore become links to a long chain of word-of-mouth.
But how do you build a story around a brand? This is where literary theory comes into play. Putting together the right words, creating excitement through a plot, sketching the main characters; all these are tools that can be used in putting together a compelling brand narrative. Starting from a stakeholder analysis and an organisational values analysis, the next step would be to compose representative and compelling vision and mission statements. These statements must somehow capture not only the keywords and the spirit of the brand, but also the narrative “yeast” to be used in putting together derivative narratives. Such derivative narratives, like stories within a story, could then be used to communicate the organisation across all channels and for every campaign.
Thus one does not need to keep inventing stories from scratch. The brand that possesses a strong narrative is a source of inspiration for any campaign; in advertising, lobbying or fundraising.
If you want to build a story for your brand, contact us!
Feline Quanta 