Twitter Success Story
January 19, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Just as every campaign should have a digital element, so too every digital campaign ought to have a Twitter element. The latest success has left me flabbergasted!
Before Christmas we launched a new site for The Rose Project. The marketing includes Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and other elements. I knew that for people to follow The Rose Project on Twitter, it had to have a hook and so we pledged that we would only provide good news. In these dark months of winter 08/09, subscribing to a little good news from a charity that’s doing life saving work in Africa is an attractive proposition indeed…
So attractive that someone from Amazon became a follower of The Rose Project. That’s how they found out about The Rose Project’s wrapping paper. And now Amazon are in discussions with The Rose Project on distributing the wrapping paper.
Now that’s a good news story if ever there was one. And the beauty of it all is that it cost the charity nada!
You can follow The Rose Project on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theroseproject
Update: here’s a great round up of US companies listening and responding to their customers through Twitter.
Tags: Amazon, The Rose Project, Twitter
Get Your Christmas Wrapping Paper, 5 for €5
December 2, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Unashamedly flogging I am. Think Moore Street, but superior quality. And a good cause.
My most recent project, The Rose Project, has a great and unusual idea to help you jazz up your Christmas gifts this year. Buy their designer gift wrap, 5 sheets for a fiver, and you will be helping a good cause… and be ticking all the boxes in terms of recyclability, Irish produced, and of course dahling – designer.
The Rose Project invited 5 Irish designers to design a print for gift wrapping paper and their designs may now be bought online or in Clerys, BT’s, Easons, and a whole range of outlets. I must say the online facility works extremely welll – seamless and effortless!
So if you want John Rocha, Helen Cody, Aideen Bodkin, Fiona Hanley or Maree Hensey wrapped around your loved ones (gifts) this year, click here and buy now.
Here they are for your viewing pleasure. Imagine your mammy’s face getting a gift wrapped in this:
Tags: Aideen Bodkin, Designer Gift Wrap, Fiona Hanley, Helen Cody, John Rocha, Maree Hensey, The Rose Project
Tales of Good News
November 25, 2008 at 12:55 pm
A new site of ours has just gone live – The Rose Project -and it’s a bit of a beauty I must say! Check it out and see for yourself how refreshingly different it is to have a charity that is not just guilting you with pictures of starving babies.
The Founder of The Rose Project, Mary Donohoe, made it quite clear in our initial brief that this site was to be about rejoicing in the strength and spirit of the African people. She believes that for too long Africans have been portrayed as passive recipients of our charity; and that is not the case. They are grateful, but they are strong spirited people. Sure, they’d have to be to cope with the loss of an entire generation that HIV and AIDS has brought to that continent.
I loved working on this project because I travelled to Malawi 10 years ago. Of all the African countries that I visited, Malawi was the one that stole my heart. The people are so gentle, so wise, and also so much fun. You can see that in the Kaso video on the site where the kids are so exuberant and full of LIFE! Or watch the story of Granny Banda – one strong woman who is raising her 6 grandchildren alone. In a land of no social welfare, this 64 year old cuts stones with a pickaxe to make money to support her family.
Key Features of The Rose Project Site:
- It’s about sharing the good news – you can see that with the “How Donations Helped” featured prominently throughout the site. Browse the stories in video or text format and I guarantee your heart will be touched.
- You can of course make a donation! There are a range of ways – you can give money or time. Or you can choose to wrap all your Christmas presents in their gorgeous designer wrapping paper. Costs €5 for 5 sheets and every cent goes to fund much needed projects.
- Keep up to date with news by subscribing to The Rose Project’s blog. Or you can follow them on Twitter where they promise to only give you good news. And if you’re on Facebook, there’s also a group.
Like all Brightspark productions, this one came about through the pooling of talents of a range of different people:
- Angel Gonzalez on design
- Jess Kelly on video editing
- Ken Stanley on development
- Heidi Jermyn on additional whizzyness
- Adrian McCarthy of Wildfire Productions for amazing source video material
- Anne Carthy for her patience positivity and good humour
- The Rose Project Team (Mary, Bernie, Niamh) for learning to use basecamp and their patience and good humour
Tags: The Rose Project
Win x 2 plus 50g Joy
November 7, 2008 at 10:19 am
Take two of your favourite clients. Introduce them to each other. The result is a double win that benefits the people of Malawi (where I left a little piece of my heart). That to me is an upshot of being in business!
I’m currently working on a new site for The Rose Project, a ground-breaking charity that helps people with HIV and AIDS in East Africa. I think of it as the ‘thinking woman’s charity’ because they just get on with doing the smart things that need to be done.
Like for example, their programme to reduce the transmission of HIV from mother to child. HIV is passed from mother to child in about 58% of cases. But this does not have to be. There is a vaccine that you can give to pregnant women if you reach them before the 26th week that reduces the risk of spreading the HIV infection from 58% to just 2%.
So what do The Rose Project do?
They are building a maternity hospital in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi and from that base they will be running a prevention of transmission from mother to child programme. They bring in nurses and doctors from Norway to assist with technical knowledge transfer. They do loads of great things, smart things that make real differences to people’s lives, but more on them later. The site’s going live in a few weeks.
But in the meantime, back to the tale of joy….
The Rose Project has teamed up with 5 Irish designers who have agreed to create five unique designs, celebrating the beauty and colour of Africa.
John Rocha, Helen Cody, and Aideen Bodkin and graphic designers Maree Hensey and Fiona Hanley have come up with amazing designs. This 100% Irish made, recycled paper can be used to add a little touch of designer magic to your Christmas gifts this year, but it’s not so jingle bellsy that you can’t use it for other occasions throughout the year.
All proceeds from the sale of the gift wrap will go directly to the funding of specific health programmes in East Africa – like the prevention of transmission of Aids from mother to child.
The Rose Project need to distribute their paper NOW to make sure it’s in the shops by Christmas-time.
And that’s where the introduction to another favourite client, Clerys, came in.
Clerys love the idea. They love it so much they’re going to base their windows around the concept. They are taking in thousands of rolls of this gift wrap that saves lives and it will be available throughout all of their stores. So make sure you pop into any Clerys store to buy your Christmas wrapping paper. There’s going to lots of other interesting initiatives between the two but for now, I have to keep them under wraps!!
Tags: Christmas Wrapping Paper, Clerys Department Store Dublin, Gift Wrap, The Rose Project
