Results and Effectiveness

Thousands of pictures were tagged in ‘The Tagging Drive’. With a total spending of a mere $189, the buzz generated helped Once Again establish a successful, sustainable model enabling them to continue their work in the communities. Within the first 3 months, the results showed: • Over 50,000 items collected • 462% increase in funds generated from the store • Increase in Facebook fans from 0 to 1,500 (using only organic growth – no Facebook advertising) ‘The Tagging Drive’ is an on-going activity on Facebook.

Creative Execution

Once Again wanted to make the act of donating, fun and engaging. Through ‘The Tagging Drive’, an online donation drive on Facebook, it reached out to the youth at no cost. The drive got youth to tag their friends’ old Facebook pictures as ‘Once Again’, thereby urging them to donate old items. When the friend received the notification, curiosity prompted them to click on the tag. It led them to the Once Again page where they read, “You’ve been tagged to remind you that someone somewhere needs your old stuff more than you. Please donate.” This compelling message was to encourage higher participation and action. The easy tagging activity, which didn't involve any apps that ask for personal information, went viral. It helped spread the word about the NGO faster, attracted many volunteers and increased donations significantly.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Once Again, a Bangalore-based NGO, collects items you don’t use any more, sells it at a minimal price to the underprivileged and uses this money for the empowerment of their community - supporting a crèche for their children, providing vocational training to women and computer training to young adults. However, awareness of the NGO was abysmally low, minimizing donations. In order to continue operations in a sustainable manner, Once Again had to become recognizable and maximize donations, but they had no budgets to spread the word. To ensure effectiveness, Once Again decided to target a segment that could act as the trailblazers for the brand – the youth. Given that the Indian youth spend a disproportionate amount of their time in uploading pictures to Facebook, Once Again recognized that the audience’s old items worth donating were languishing not just in their closets, but also in their vintage Facebook pictures.