RALLY & 'NEW POWER'

I’ve found myself talking to five people last week about the New Power book.

Of those five people, only one had read it.

Which breaks my heart (ish), as I think it’s a really important book for these digitally disrupted and politically turbulent times.

So I’d love you all to read it. Or if time is tight, maybe just watch the TED talk or read this Harvard Business Review article.

I promise it will help you think about things in a different way. It certainly helped me figure a lot of stuff out when I was thinking about leaving my job and setting up Rally.

I want Rally to be a ‘New Power’ organisation. When you study this graphic I think you’ll understand why.

It looks a whole lot more fun on the right hand side as well.

Paul

GLOBAL DIGITAL DATA TO SATISFY YOUR INNER GEEK...

We love to geek out and bury ourselves in data about how people are using the internet.

So the arrival of a new ‘We Are Social’ / ‘Hootsuite’ report is always a special day around here. This one is the Q4 snapshot of global digital trends and it’s a brilliant resource.

The following highlights were pulled out by the authors:

• There are almost 4.2 billion internet users around the world in October 2018, up 7 percent since this time last year.

• Around 3.4 billion people around the world used social media in September 2018, up 10 percent versus September 2017.

• More than 5.1 billion people now use a mobile phone, with most using a smartphone.

Digital 2018 Q4 Global Digital Statshot (October 2018) (v2) from DataReportal

But the really big day comes in January when their annual report is published. To give you an insight into how exciting that is, here’s last year’s report. Dig in and enjoy.

Digital 2018 Global Digital Overview (January 2018) from DataReportal

More detail, links & credits:

The State of the Internet in Q4 2018.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

SWAG FROM IRELAND

We got our first post today. Well, first post if you don’t count letters from the bank.

Our friend Damian who runs the incredible Ask Direct in Dublin sent us these badges from the Michael D. Higgins presidential re-election campaign.

Earlier in the summer we spent a day and a half in Dublin with Damian and his incredible team talking about the strategies and tactics that drive the most successful political fundraising campaigns - which they then used and built on to power the work they did on the campaign.

Today is election day in Ireland. If you have a vote, make sure you get out and use it. If you don’t have a vote, take a moment to look the #keepthepoet hashtag on twitter and get a feel for MDH’s appeal.

SICK ISN'T WEAK...

I was at the IFC last week and the SickKids presentation on Thursday took my breath away. It told the story of how SickKids in Toronto rebooted their relationship with the public to supercharge their fundraising and attract new audiences.

They did it by focussing on three key things:

1. They deliberately moved from being a charity brand to a performance brand. Think Nike.

2. They shifted their mindset from keeping up with what the charity sector does, to redefining it and winning at it.

3. They moved from the central and well used proposition of ‘Help Us’ to ‘Join Us’.

It’s that last one that resonates the most with how Rally thinks and operates. We know we’re doing our best work when we are helping clients attract and mobilise their crowd by putting their values front and centre rather than a particular fundraising product.

This is the launch film. Please watch it full screen with the sound most definitely turned up.

Kids in the hospital over the Christmas period worry that Santa doesn’t know where they are. So they made this film.

They ran this one at Mother’s Day (and it was at this point in the session where I started sobbing).

This is the latest film, launched a few weeks ago. It’s the moment in the plan where the call to action starts to focus on action - from all parts of the Toronto community.

It’s stunning work. And a real, live example of how an organisation can make its brand and fundraising work brilliantly together.

What about the results? They were amazing. And as soon as I get the slides I will update you all. But we’re talking millions of dollars.

Paul