Christmas – beyond the bauble

Debbie Clark, Planner, and I were both thinking about writing a post about Christmas. And we both came up with the same observations:

1) There’s a preponderance of appeals this Christmas that ask the recipient to write something on a cut-out star or bauble and send it back.
2) Many Christmas appeals seem to have ‘it’s Christmas’ as the proposition.
3) It must be incredibly hard for people who support lots of charities to differentiate between them. Or more importantly, choose who to give to.

To get something clear – we’re not against technique. The appeal we’ve developed for Mind this Christmas asks the reader to write a message to the volunteers and staff taking calls from people with mental health problems this Christmas. Asking for a message back is a really strong response-driving technique. It makes people feel needed and valued. It moves the ask beyond a transaction and creates a closer, more genuine connection to the cause.

It’s just that this shouldn’t be your proposition or your story. After all, technique isn’t differentiating if everyone’s doing it. Which means you need a compelling, relevant and emotional proposition behind it. A proposition that’s based on audience insight, not a pun about the time of year. (And ‘your donation is sort of like a Christmas present’ doesn’t count.)

For some charities it should be all too easy. For the Crisis and the Centrepoints of this world, being able to tell the story of people who are cold, hungry and alone at a time of year when everyone else isn’t, is a no-brainer, and they do it brilliantly. The Good Agency worked with Centrepoint to develop their annual ‘Home for Christmas’ appeal which is about making sure people who are spending their first Christmas away from home don’t have to spend it homeless.

For other charities it looks harder. Save the Children’s work is all about the survival of under-fives, and much of it takes place in countries where Christmas doesn’t exist. Finding a resonant proposition takes more work and some digging into programmes. But then we read that pneumonia is the biggest killer of children under five, and it all fell into place. Together we developed an integrated appeal that’s all about children in the UK having every chance of surviving an illness like pneumonia, and children in Sudan having almost none.

The point is, each of these ideas should have resonance with the donor. They should cut through and make the cause stand out – a compelling reason not just to give, but to give first, to give more and to give now. More so than the ten appeals they’ll get through their door, the newspaper appeals, the TV and radio appeals and the man dressed as Santa at the shopping centre.

That’s because most charities in the UK are vying for a smaller and smaller pool of direct-mail responsive donors. Especially donors who particularly like to give at Christmas.

So, we think that the question at the front of your mind in about 7 months shouldn’t be  ‘what shall we do for the Christmas appeal?’. It should be ‘what shall we do to make the Christmas appeal stand out from the rest?’