I have the fortunate opportunity to work at an agency that forces us to learn and keep up with the world outside of our buzzing office. Stan calls this "Suit School" and while most of us don't wear suits to work, as Brand Managers we pretty much fit the stigma anyways. Each week we drag our asses out of bed for a day and get to work 30 minutes early (7:59:59 to be exact) to learn something new about our clients, our agency or just life in general.
This week Jeff Sheets, professor and founder of the BYU Ad Lab (which, who knew such great work came from a place with wacky liquor laws?) came to discuss his work with the advertising program at BYU and more specifically his student's work with the UNICEF Tap Project. I am definitely someone who cries at the Sarah McLachlan ads for pet adoption, but I don't always give enough time or money to charity as I probably should. Like most of you I'm sure, we get caught up in our own lives, our own bills and our own wants that we tend to forget that there is an entire world that can benefit from us taking 5 minutes of our time for a simple act. It was the first time that I heard of the Tap Project, and I thought it was a really awesome initiative. Too often with NPOs or public service advertising the message is lost in too much information or evangelists for the cause are just too much to handle, forcing people to shut it off instead of getting involved.
The Tap Project is simple. The project started in 2007 in NYC where an idea was developed to partner with restaurants to encourage patrons to donate $1 for their glass of tap water during World Water Week in March. Enough restaurants participated the first year and the buzz grew. Since 2007 many states have participating cities who have taken on this initiative themselves and you can find restaurants in your area on the website where you'll be able to donate while you eat this March. It seems like such an "easy" idea, but it is clear that to make it successful it must be marketed in the right way to make people feel compelled to participate...this is why I think it is worth talking about. The Tap Project makes us reflect on something that we take for granted every day in this country, clean drinking water, and allows us the opportunity to make a small donation to help children across the globe. Just $1 dollar can provide a child with clean drinking water for 40 days. 40 DAYS! Quite an impact. Last year the Tap Project raised over $850,000 nationwide keeping millions of children from dying just by providing them with clean drinking water.
With a billion charities and organizations across the country that are taking little steps to help others, I could have talked about a number of other organizations but the Tap Project caught my attention because of its integration online. The Tap Project website has a very clean design that is full of information but not overloaded with facts that you can't understand what the project is within the first few seconds on the site. It looks, well, cool. You can learn a lot in a matter of minutes, easily make a donation or pass on to friends. And yes, you can even follow the Tap Project on Twitter (@tapproject). They have done a great job at allowing different states to take on their own Tap Project identity while keeping with the same design parameters (style, font, color, etc). This allows for the project to feel more localized on a state by state basis and distinguishes itself from being just another national charity. Individual states take over the project under the UNICEF umbrella and make it more relevant to their area with their own websites and promotional materials. Elements of the Utah Tap Project website was developed by the BYU Ad Lab and I absolutely love their TV spots features on the homepage. I think this is even more successful for big projects because it gives residents of each state ownership of their participation.
Especially on a website for a non-profit organization there has to be some sort of hook to get me to explore, and the Tap Project definitely has succeeded in creating an interesting site that is simple enough to understand yet powerful enough to undoubtedly make an impact for years to come. I think it is often tough to figure out how to break the mold of web presence and advertising for NPOs because of their sheer volume. For a project that is only 2 years old, I think that it is definitely an example of the right way to take a simple idea, make an impact and successfully execute both on and off-line tactics.
The Tap Project makes it easy to see the glass half-full.
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