CASE STUDY
“Turn Two’s vision, creativity, and collaborative spirit are driving a campaign that will change the way people think about community foundations.”
Elyse Hammett, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
Community Foundation Awareness Initiative
Building a Research-Based National Awareness Campaign for Community Foundations
The Challenge
Community foundations have been around for well over a century and positively impact the lives of millions of people in nearly every U.S. ZIP code.
Yet if you approach most adults on the street and ask them to define a community foundation, you’re very likely to get greeted with blank stares.
This lack of a clear identity is a challenge, to say the least.
After all, if people can’t define who you are and what you stand for, it’s difficult to inspire them to invest in your work.
The Solution
It’s against this backdrop that we’ve embarked on a multi-year effort to launch a research-based brand awareness campaign that introduces potential donors, professional advisors, nonprofits, and other partners to community foundations.
Working on behalf of the Community Foundation Awareness Initiative — a network of more than 160 U.S. community foundations in nearly all 50 states — we’ve partnered with the communications teams at more than 40 of its members to:
Identify the field’s unique value proposition.
Create audience-tested, easy-to-understand language about what community foundations do.
Develop and pressure test a creative concept and language that resonates with potential community foundation donors and partners.
Create a suite of creative materials that is being used and adapted by individual community foundations in every part of the U.S. — and is being amplified by a national ad campaign.
Our process included:
Surveys of key internal stakeholders at U.S. community foundations — including executive leadership, communications and marketing staff, program staff, and development professionals.
The development of target audience personas.
Managing advisory committees comprised of 12 community foundation communications leads and 5 CEOs.
Focus group testing of key messages and creative concepts in 21 markets.
Refinements of messaging and strategies based on performance metrics.
We recently completed the first year of the campaign, which included the delivery of tested creative materials that are designed to be customized and used in a diverse range of markets — and across multiple platforms.
Initial deliverables for the 40-plus participating community foundations included:
A detailed, 48-page branding and messaging guide.
A comprehensive suite of creative materials using the tested messaging — including print, social media, digital, radio, video, and billboard ads.
A guide to community foundations for prospective donors that incorporated key messaging from the frames developed for the prospective donor persona.
A national digital, social media, and audio awareness campaign that targeted our prospective donor persona.
Results
Based on our research-based messaging approach, the initial results from the national awareness campaign targeting prospective donors vastly exceeded benchmarks for similar digital and social media awareness campaigns. For example:
Social media ads earned a click-through rate of 3.62% — more than three times higher than click-through rates for similar campaigns.
Digital ads earned a click-through rate of 0.17% — more than double the rate of typical campaigns.
Video ads had a view rate (the rate at which people viewed the ad to its conclusion) of 63.6% — more than twice the national average of 31%
This research-based approach to developing messaging frames and creative concepts that appeal to a range of audiences in a diverse range of markets shows our abilities to create highly-effective messaging.
Learn more about our work with community foundations.
Social media ads earned a click-through rate of
3.62%
– more than
3x higher
than click-through rates for similar campaigns.