Save The Children outlines digital ambitions as it finalises global brand proposition
Save The Children is set to embark on an overhaul of its digital communications and platforms as it applies the finishing touches to its international brand voice in a bid to “get global”.
The charity, which recently appointed SapientNitro to lead the digital transformation, is hoping that a variety of tactics, such as personalised donating pages and tailored content will help serve the needs of supporters and partners, while streamlining its current “unsophisticated” global strategy.
Speaking to The Drum, Sue Allchurch, director of marketing and communications, said that while Save The Children is just at the start of the overhaul, the ambition is to better connect people with the charity's work.
“We need the whole experience to be much more personal,” she revealed. “It’s quite a complicated thing in the NGO [non-governmental organisation] world; it’s not just about people buying a product, it’s a bunch of people, like the corporate partners who all want in-depth knowledge and understanding.
“We could create some form of ‘Save-ipedia’ giving people access not just to our own information, but information other people have got in the area of child protection, survival, education, and nutrition.”
In contrast, Save The Children also wants to provide a solution for people who just want “a quick in and out” to the site to leave donations and access event information such as last week’s Christmas Jumper Day.
Allchurch mulled the idea of creating a personalised platform for each supporter, which would comprise their own fundraising page, and tailored content to suit their interests and level of involvement.
User generated content is another aim for the charity, and Allchurch revealed aims of equipping people on the ground with simple filming equipment, so the public can see what is happening “live, in the moment as something happens”.
Plans are afoot to reimagine Save The Children’s brand, with the idea that communications and marketing drives will in future be told from the perspective of the child, rather than adult - something the charity learnt from its ‘Second a Day’ viral video.
“One of the things that we believe from a brand point of view going forward – we’re in the middle of finalising the brand at the moment – is that children’s voices and the perspective of children is extremely compelling,” she remarked. “Looking forward we’re going to look more and more at how we can bring children in as the voice and the centre of the communications.”
Social will be a new focus with Save the Children hoping to engage with teenagers and young adults to encourage support. “What we’re trying to do more of is to get children to campaign and fight on behalf of others. So we’re trying to have a lot more of community engagement and come through that point of view,” she added.
Speaking about the charity’s global ambitions, Allchurch said that she is currently championing a drive “to get global” and revealed that the global nature of digital has meant Save The Children has already “cracked" the global brand proposition.
“When you work in digital you know it’s completely global and we don’t have the best, most sophisticated, or simplest digital strategy globally at all, but that’s what we want to do with this digital transformation, just tidy it all up and make it much clearer. We have to get global.”
The charity is currently in the process of hiring a digital director and upping its social teams in preparation of the new digital offering.
This May Save The Children’s acting digital director Mark Weber told The Drum the charity is aiming to steer away from categorising content as 'digital' and commented: “The end game is that effectively, digital ceases to exist. People shouldn’t really be consciously thinking ‘one thing is digital, and one thing is not digital’”.