Case Study: Feeding America and the Spark Generator

Feeding America brilliantly used Sparks to solve the challenge of every umbrella organization: how to effectively include local chapters in national campaign messaging. The triumph was both a top down and bottom up marketing effort.  

Background:

Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. They work in tandem with a nationwide network of member food banks in the fight to end hunger. Their annual September campaign, Hunger Action Month, is a massive effort to educate communities on the scope of hunger issues in the United States and empower them to take action.

Feeding America has utilized numerous Call2Action Sparks. This time, they had a variety of videos featuring well-known celebrities like Matt Damon, Taye Diggs, and Ana Ortiz. They were looking to harness the power of all the local food banks' (over 200) online communities.

The challenges were two-fold: unique campaign materials for 200 food banks was cost-prohibitive. And the logistics of coordinating each local chapter to follow a common campaign strategy would be difficult to implement.

The Spark Solution (click for video):

Our Approach:

First, our Spark solution allows for videos to directly engage action – wherever they are posted. Next, our Spark Generator enables hundreds of supporters or partners to personalize a campaign. In this case, local food banks were able to put their link next to the Matt Damon PSA and so, in effect, create their own celebrity ad. At the same time, the head office could ensure unified messaging across all partner sites.

The Results:

“The Call2Action team has been a pleasure to work with—and with their help, we were able to offer our 200 member food banks a useful, innovative way to engage the public. Additionally, the Spark widget is attractive and presents a unique and positive brand impression—a win in itself.” 

                                            -- Tony Bagdy, Director of Digital Strategy, Feeding America

   • 63% of local food banks embedded the Sparks on their sites in less than a week.

  • The campaign achieved hyper-local marketing and an effective balance of top-down and bottom-up efforts. 

   • In total, the campaign hit close to 122,000 views.

   • Local chapter "Get Involved" click-throughs yielded a 1.2% conversion rate.

   • The Spark videos saw over 13 times the engagement from viewers as the industry standard.

   • 94% of viewers watched the video from start to finish.

   • The videos were shared across various social media platforms, and we were able to identify key sites and
     bloggers that were especially helpful in spreading the campaign.

For a new tool and marketing approach across hundreds of chapters and just a few months, the collaborative effort was a tremendous result.