44 • F I L M/ T V F U N D RAISIN G
NEED CREATIVE INSPIRATION?
OPEN THE BOX!
Derek Humphries opens his creative toolkit and shares 10 techniques he has used to successfully generate creative ideas – either working in groups or on his own.
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here do creative ideas come from? Ask any creative person and they’ll struggle to tell you. Creative idea generation can simply become part of your DNA; you reach a level of ‘unconscious competence’ – you can do it but you don’t think about how. But underlying this ability is a massive range of practical techniques you can use.
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ICEBREAKER – MY WORST EVER FUNDRAISING If you are anything like me, you hate ice-breaking exercises at the start of a meeting, such as, “Tell us something about you no-one knows!” That sort of thing. I tend to find a better ice-breaker is to take the lead in talking about failures. I confess some terrible fundraising failure and encourage others to do the same. It creates a sense of relief, generates laughs, and sets a context for creative meetings where people are willing to suggest ideas because they aren’t afraid of being judged by people who have just confessed their failures.
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BE AWARE OF CREATIVITY KILLERS: HABITS AND PEOPLE! Every organisation has people and habits that are good at killing creativity, whether they be related to sheer habit, lack of time, lack of budget, lack of a
process or a fear of trying new things and making mistakes (and maybe a fear of consequently being fired). Consider what these issues are in your workplace and set out to consciously remove the obstacles. Also think carefully about how people use language in creative meetings. For example, if you ban people from saying, “That won’t work because…” and encourage them instead to say, “I think we could make the idea better by…” you will create a positive atmosphere and develop ideas more quickly.
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THE SPACES IN BETWEEN Strong, creative thinking comes from the spaces in between established practice. Look at different fundraising propositions and practices and see if they can be combined in unusual forms. How can you combine legacy fundraising and DRTV? Events and face-to-face? Challenge events and regular giving recruitment?
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USING THE RIGHT VOICE This idea isn’t just about your cause’s tone of voice but more about who the different people are who can tell your story and from which perspectives. The person or point of view you choose should have a strong impact on how you tell your story, and ensure you do not
Finding it hard to see how drtv can work for you?
Above When the UK lifeboat service doubled the size of this leaflet, the return on investment went up by 70%. Top This VSO ad, which ran on London underground carriages, invited people to donate their professional skills to work on projects in developing countries.
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WHERE CAN YOU BEST ENGAGE PEOPLE? Think carefully about where you will get your message across and if you can tailor it to the environment. The obvious example is to look at campaigns for water- and sanitation- related causes that may run in public washrooms. Or the example (left) from VSO, inviting people to donate their professional skills to work on projects in developing countries. The campaign ran in London underground carriages, targeting people during the drudgery of their daily commute; a time when they may be dreaming of a different life.
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lapse into often bland ‘organisation speak’. Let’s say yours is a cause that deals with heart disease. You could tell the story from the point of view of a patient, a parent, the CEO, a doctor or nurse, a registered organ donor, the parent of someone who has died and donated their heart or the motorbike courier who takes the heart from A to B. You could even tell the story from the viewpoint of the heart! The choices you make here will all lead you to tell the story in different ways.
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USE ALL FIVE SENSES It won’t always work but think about how you might use not just sight, but all five senses. I’ve seen, and smelled, a direct mail pack for a housing charity where the letter gives off the odour of damp when you touch it! I’ve heard of a major donor prospect who visited a music school and the band started playing his favourite tune as he walked in (because a clever fundraiser had researched what music he liked). What might work for you?
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MAKE AN OLD IDEA NEW We all have fundraising propositions or events that we have had for years and we always do them that way because we have always done them that way. But how can we freshen things up? My favourite example here is from The Salvation Army in the US. For years the organisation had raised money with bucket collections in the street while singing traditional Christmas carols in December. Then two brave Salvos quit singing
traditional hymns and instead started miming to Mariah Carey et al. You’d never forget seeing a uniformed salvo sing and dance to All I Want for Christmas is You!
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DON’T EXPLAIN SOMETHING WHEN YOU CAN DEMONSTRATE IT This builds on the idea of using all five senses. Far too often in fundraising we start sentences with Imagine if… If we do our job well, then we won’t have to ask people to imagine. Instead we will help them understand through experiences. One simple example: I once produced a mail pack for WaterAid that contained a carrier bag so that people could fill the bag with water and feel how heavy it is to carry water over long distances. (I admit this was long ago before we all realised that plastic carrier bags are the devil’s work, but you get the idea!)
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BE BRAVE; DON’T TRY TO PLEASE EVERYBODY Great fundraising need not be about making people happy (although we all know the act of giving should be a positive, joyous thing). Take Amnesty International’s What’s Your Excuse? campaign. The copy inside the cover of a loose magazine insert asked why the reader has never got around to supporting Amnesty: You know our work is important. You care about people who are wrongly imprisoned. Yet you don’t support our work. Why not? That’s challenging stuff, and it will irritate some people. But it will also inspire many people who do indeed support Amnesty in their heart, but not yet through their wallet.
WHAT’S THE NEXT SMALL IDEA? How often have you sat around a meeting table, staring at a blank flipchart, trying to come up with the next big idea? It’s a horrible place to be! Instead, try to come up with the next small idea. How could you improve your reply forms? How could your reception area be more inspiring? How can your thank-you correspondence be more delightful (and despatched more quickly)? Many years ago, I helped run the direct marketing campaign for the UK’s lifeboat service. The supporter recruitment leaflet (below left) was simply unbeatable in terms of return on investment. We tried everything to improve it. Then, one day, I suggested we make it bigger. That was all. Just make it twice the size. Someone suggested, rightly, that the paper costs would double. So, we tested it carefully. And the return on investment went up by 70%! And why? Simply because the older people who supported this cause at the time found it easier to fill in the form. There you go. Ten ways to help kickstart your creative thinking. Now, I must confess, I don’t like nice, neat lists of 10 things, so here’s one more… walk the dog – it always helps.
Derek Humphries Derek is Creative Strategist/ Director at the DTV Group. He is an advisory panel member at Rogare, a fundraising think tank that is delivering a project around the ethics of imagery in fundraising. If you have views on these issues, contact him at derek.humphries@dtvgroup.co.uk.
Then drop a line to plain talking, fluent in fundraising DTV. Email info@dtvgroup.asia to speak with Alex, Lauren, Kerri, Derek or Peter. Or find out more at www.dtvgroup.asia