Show it to your mum

Steve, our Head of Creative has come up with a new and ingenious way of evaluating campigns. As much as it pains me to say it, it's not always about data analysis at the end of day ...

Show it to your mum:

While the final arbiter of the success or failure of any fundraising campaign is the balance sheet, results can take ages to come in. So for the impatient amongst us I’d like to suggest an alternative, although not in my case at least foolproof, means of determining whether your latest campaign is working as hard as you’d like it to.

Show it to somebody outside of the industry whose opinion you really respect, or if like me you are still fighting a somewhat desperate and probably vain battle for belated parental approval, you could show it to your mum.

If yours is anything like mine, I’d suggest only showing her materials in the public domain (inserts, press etc.). The simple reason being that despite years of my painstakingly and repeatedly explaining that lots of people want to receive Direct Mail, and value their relationships with the charities they support, my mum still insists that I ‘write begging letters’ for a living.

I don’t think my mum could ever be described as a typical anything, and she certainly isn’t a typical charity donor (she’s half way between a Dorothy Donor and a Baby Boomer – does that make her a Borothy? Actually, given her naturally sunny disposition I think Doomer might be more apt). But she reads the papers (OK, she does the quick crossword and checks her stars, but you know what I mean), knows what’s going on in the world and has a sharp eye for any contrivance or, as she would put it, ‘old flannel’.

So in many ways, she’s a one-woman, extremely cost-effective focus group. If you suspect yours might be able to offer you the same service, can I suggest the following, completely unscientific, scale for assessing whether your fundraising is really hitting the mark?

If she says “Mmmm. Lovely” then hands your lovingly crafted insert or press ad straight back to you and quickly changes the subject, its time to go back to the drawing board. 1 out of 10.

You’re on the right tracks when she takes an inordinately long time to read it, has to flip back pages a couple of times to get her bearings and says at the end “Oh yeah, I get it now, that’s quite clever”, but you could do better. The proposition’s got a bit muddied somewhere along the way. 2-4 out of 10.

A “Who’s my clever little boy” (I’m 40) and an offer to rustle up a quick bacon sandwich means you’ve definitely got something. 5-7 out of 10.

“Blimey, where’d you get your brains from?” and a quick ring round to make sure sisters, aunties and assorted acquaintances (in my mum’s case the ladies she used to work with on ‘the dinners’) get to see your piece, and are left in no doubt as to whose progeny was responsible for it, and you know you’ve produced a winner. 8-9 out of 10.

But you know you’ve produced the best, possibly award-winning work, when despite hours of your pleading and protestations, and your perhaps even offering to email her the original brief, she insists that, “You never did that,” and flat out refuses to believe that you could possibly have been involved with the production of such a powerful, moving or inspiring piece of work*. 10 out 10.

*This doesn’t happen very often.