One of our favorite ad agencies, Mono, created an innovative campaign for Branson’s Virgin Unite to help put an end to homelessness.
“Do Whatever It Takes” is a website initiative that harnesses the power of wacky internet videos and combines it with charitable fundraising sites like FirstGiving. Anyone can make a pledge to do virtually anything, like drinking a gallon of milk in under an hour, for a set amount of money the individual determines, say $100. The online community then contributes to their fund and, if their goal is reached, the pledger does their “whatever” and the raised money gets donated to a homeless philanthropy.
Inspired.
We’d now like to triple dog dare you to think even broader than homelessness or even bigger than Virgin Unite. In fact, last year, ecopop had two similar ideas that could be stand-alone social ventures that anyone is welcome to do with or without us.
The first business venture we called “Good for Something Talent Thingy”. This concept is essentially the “Do Whatever It Takes” idea but centered around the cultural insight that everyone has a talent, let’s put them to good use, i.e. the charitable cause of your choice. Part America’s Got Talent meets fundraising Telethon but actually worth watching, the Good for Something Talent Thingy would be a series of highly entertaining local events that would be filmed for primetime television, as well as have a massive online content component. Contestants would submit their charitable act, such as “A drum solo for Darfur”, online. Those with the most votes or money raised would be invited to perform on TV and raise even more funds via mobile texting, for example. Using multiple mediums not only means more fundraising opportunities but it also gives us more time to engage in the emotional backstory behind our contestants and their charities–reality television gold.
Our second venture idea we’re reminded of is based on what we’ve named “competitive volunteerism”. People love to be competitive and people love to give back to their community. (Or, at least people love watching other people do these things.) Combining the two on a local and global level gives everyone a chance to challenge themselves to do more good than they’ve done previously, as well as compete to do more good than their neighbor. Competitive Volunteerism ups the ante and raises the bar on do-gooding. Because we could all do more good and give more back, faster. The online experience could be a lot like RecordSetter. You post a video of you doing something good for an individual, your community, or the world at large, and someone tries to beat it. Simple. The online community of voters would determine which global citizens the rest of us slackers should out do (good) as well as where your help is needed in the world. Don’t even get us started on the TV show possibilities.
Or something like that.
We love it when we learn about fresh ideas designed to solve a social problem. We love them even more when there isn’t a brand attached to them, unlike Pepsi Refresh, for example. Our hope is that other social entrepreneurs pick up on these campaign ideas and turn them into sustainable businesses with even greater impact. In other words, think about even more media outlets than just web, or better yet, think about a longterm social business venture instead of a short-lived campaign. And think about even more opportunities to give to more charitable organizations, ones that the community can choose from.
The world-changing ideas are out there and “Do Whatever It Takes” is proving to be a fun and successful solution on what I’m guessing was a relatively small marketing budget. Now imagine the impact an idea like this could have with proper seed capital and a team of dedicated creative problem-solvers, like the ones employed at forward-thinking ad agencies, working on only one social venture instead of focusing on the next great campaign for several clients.
Hmm, indeed.
Perhaps now is the time for you, for us, to all get together and step it up a notch. We’ll race you backwards for it.