I do a bit for charity (don’t like to talk about it!) and for the last eon, or 6 months at least, I have been working with a fantastic team on what was an amazing experience and event – #YFactorLeics.
It was essentially a “talent” contest fought out between members of the Leicestershire business community to raise funds for two charities, The Lord’s Taverners (for whom the agency works gratis and I will be running the London Marathon for next month) and Mencap.
Here’s the official video for you to have a look at in your leisure – just click the line below the pic.
We created a blog-based website on good old wordpress, which by the end of the campaign was getting over 300 hits a day. Then created a twitter hashtag #YFactorLeics and a twitter account @LordsTavLeics and worked hard to leverage the support of our celebrity judges to get this going.
It was also crucial to get the contestants themselves in on the act, so we cajoled/bullied them into regular blogs about their training schedules and tried to lift the lid on the highs and lows of balancing their hectic work life with that of home.
Obviously, traditional PR was always going to play a big role and we placed various articles with the local paper, the Leicester Mercury and with Insider, the regional business magazine. Both media partners (unofficial as they were) were brilliant and really helped us to get the word out.
I’ll write more on this as a proper case study once we have the official money raised figures in but for now, I know that we had over 600 people in the building and raised over £45,000 and that figure is still rising.
Main lesson – integrate your online and offline efforts and get the stakeholders involved. Everybody wins!