You’ll never forget an elephant: Enthuse Client Focus

If you’ve been in London at all over the last couple of months, you can’t have missed the Elephant Parade, which has seen beautifully painted and decorated elephant statues springing up all over London’s streets.

The Elephant Parade is a charity campaign aimed at raising awareness of the plight of the endangered Asian elephant, and it’s been very successful – capturing the hearts of millions and raising valuable funds for the charity as well. This week I want to tell you exactly how one of my clients is using The Elephant Parade to do some good and raise their own business profile ar the same time.

PS: This week sees the UK’s longest day of the year. Time to review your marketing goals for 2010. What? You haven’t made any marketing goals this year?! Come to my workshop and set goals, make changes. Click here for more info.

forthcoming events:

Marketing Mentor Taster Workshop
30 June 9-11am
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Simply the Best – with Jo King
**DATE CHANGE** 6 AUGUST 10am-3pm
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Social Media: How to make it work for you
30 June 6-8pm
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Social Media Basics for Absolute Beginners
16 July 9am-1pm
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Advanced Social Media Strategies
16 July 2pm-6pm
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enthuse case study: ivory tree and the elephant

Every now and then I feature one of my clients and look at what they are doing to market their business, and how you may be able to learn from their experience.

WHO: IVORY TREE is a boutique interior design agency based in West London. Run by Jody Atkins, they specialise in luxurious interiors that don’t cost the earth.

WHAT: A brand-building sponsorship campaign. Ivory Tree have sponsored “Decors”, one of the elephants on the Elephant Parade

WHY: Jody has always loved elephants. When she lived in South Africa she was just 2 miles from an elephant orphanage, and visited them on a regular basis. She even named her business after her favourite place in Africa.

“Some time ago, I realised that whatever might be happening to us, with the recession or personal problems, there is always someone out there who is worse off than we are, and that we are able to help”.

Sponsoring an elephant in the parade was a perfect way to join in with a high profile campaign with lots of media interest, and the ability to reach lots of people. It also tied in with Jody’s new product launch of homewares – the first one of which is elephant mugs.

HOW: Jody has been careful to maximise the opportunity that this sponsorship provides. When working with charities to raise your profile, it is not enough to throw money at them and run away. That won’t do much for your business. Let’s look at the things Jody is doing, large and small:

• As official sponsors, Ivory Tree can use the Elephant Parade logo. So Jody has added this to her email signature.

• The home page of the Ivory Tree website now features a photo of Jody’s elephant and details about the charity AND her new product launch

• A press release was sent to the local paper in Peterborough (the location of the Ivory Tree satellite office), generating local press coverage

Jody is associating herself with the Elephant Family charity in even more ways.

• Firstly, she is seeking celebrity signatures for a small number of the elephant mugs, which will be auctioned for charity

• Secondly, a percentage of sales from the main range of the mugs will be donated to the Elephant Family charity

• Thirdly, she is going to visit the elephant sanctuary in Sri Lanka that the charity operates and work with them for 5 weeks, and will be video blogging and tweeting about their work there.

In this way, Jody is associating herself and Ivory Tree closely with the elephant charity – which allows her to leverage their brand for the benefit of Ivory Tree.

This small business has thereby managed to place itself alongside much bigger companies, like Coutts, who have also sponsored The Elephant Parade.

WHAT YOU CAN LEARN:

1. Charity-related campaigns are a great way of “doing well by doing good” and building your brand.
2. Choose a charity that relates in some way to an issue that you’re passionate about and/or that relates to your business (e.g. I live on a boat and support the RNLI amongst others)
3. Plan your involvement carefully. You want to make the most of the opportunity, without seeming insincere or exploitative.
4. Don’t rely on the charity to promote you, they are too busy doing their good stuff! You have to tell people about it yourself.

Now you can go out there and help someone else whilst promoting your business!