COMMENTS

Unicef would be advised to take a page from CCF's marketing strategy and focus on profiles of individual child labor victims. I just wrote about CCF's approach in [url=http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/nonprofit-marketing-personal.htm]Nonprofit Marketing: The Power of Personalization[/url]. Behavioral economics research shows that people donate more money to help an individual than to multiple people, despite the greater need when larger numbers are involved.

Roger

Posted by: Neuromarketing on 25 Sep 2007 | 02:18 pm

@Roger: Thanks for your comment, Roger. I agree that Unicef should focus on individual labor victims because this makes it easier to understand the problem. If you get to know a child and his/her circumstances, you learn about a true situation. You start to feel sorry for the child. No clever commercial can compete with that. In Holland [url=http://www.geefomditkind.nl/]Liliane Fonds[/url] has been doing this for as long as I can remember.

Posted by: Fresh Creation on 25 Sep 2007 | 02:48 pm

i think the answer to your question is all of the above.

Posted by: thijs on 27 Sep 2007 | 08:56 pm

by that i mean, more donations, hits on the website, and awarenes

Posted by: thijs on 27 Sep 2007 | 09:21 pm

Do not underestimate the intelligence of your audience. A portrait of one child can draw a lot of attention / emotion / donations, but I think it is still important to point out the more complex causes of poverty, child labot, etc. It's not about feeling sorry for a single child, it's about a good analysis of poverty and inequality. Feeling sorry for a childs blurrs your clear view.

Posted by: GoeroeJossie on 28 Sep 2007 | 10:20 pm

GoeroeJossie, the suggestion to focus on a single child is actually based on [url=http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/nonprofit-marketing-personal.htm]research[/url] showing that donations were higher in that circumstance.

Having said that, one basic truth about any kind of marketing or advertising is that no approach is perfect for every viewer. Indeed, the original story in WIRED notes that Bill Gates's analytical, left brained approach to giving is what enables him to attack the big problems that many others have ignored.

Posted by: Neuromarketing on 28 Sep 2007 | 10:30 pm

@Neuromarketing: Bill Gates' fortune is also what helps him attack the big problems. :-) Most people don't have that kind of money and that's why focusing on one child's story works. If you show the big problem that person will think: "My 5 dollar donation is nothing, the problem's too big." By resizing the problem to a smaller scale, that person will give money because now he/she thinks: "I can save that child." I think that's the difference.

Posted by: Fresh Creation on 29 Sep 2007 | 11:22 am

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