What’s the problem?

NKF at a glance

NKF is the largest kidney foundation in Singapore, helping ~2/3 of the total number of kidney failure patients in Singapore. Their work involves:

• promoting kidney transplants
• providing quality, subsidized dialysis treatment
• increasing public awareness on Kidney failure and conducting health screenings.

Controversy

Before 2004, NKF was a high-profiled charity organization in Singapore with strong support from the public.

However, NKF was embroiled in a scandal when it was revealed that Mr. T.T Durai, then CEO of NKF, enjoyed lavish perks and was involved in fraudulent practices resulting in a scandal. Eventually, NKF retreated from the public eye.

Preliminary Problems

A decade later, NKF returns from its self-imposed exile. However, currently, the public has very low interest and awareness of NKF.

While NKF has put in efforts like Sit-A-Thon public events to promote awareness, these efforts were largely ineffective as donation numbers dropped to an all-time low of $20.7 million.

Research Question

After understanding the background of NKF, we wanted to investigate how NKF can leverage the various social media platforms to increase its donations, engagement and build positive brand perception.

Understanding the crowd

Target Audience

Millennials in Singapore aged between 24 and 35.

Why millennials?

• Financial independence & greater ability to donate -> increased sustainability of achieving success as they have a longer lifetime stream of income
• High social media usage & avid sharing of social causes on social media due to their desire to seek social credit for their “good” deeds (The G. Brief, 2016).
• More likely to volunteer; positive volunteerism trend in the target group
• More receptive to new information and more willing to change existing perceptions of any residual skepticism of NKF

Target Audience’s Perception of NKF

• NKF was one of the charity organisations they are aware of, however awareness of its activites are weak.
• Our target audience has an unfavourable brand association of NKF

What’s wrong with current strategy?

-> Limited information about their organization

-> Lack of updates

-> Weak engagement with external stakeholders (Public)

What’s the gap and the objective of our recommendations?

Problems ascertained:

1. Falling Donations
2. Falling engagement performance relative to competitors
3. Low performance in reputation and social media interaction.

Qualitative goals:

• increase shareability and engagement by improving social media content
• raise awareness of NKF’s mission to champion for health through viral content
• build positive brand perception so as to increase overall donation

Quantitative objectives to justify that public funds are being wisely spent:

Short term:

• increase Facebook & Instragram fans by 20% respectively
• increase engagement by 30%

Long term:

• increase by 5%: positive brand perception in reputation and interaction and overall donations

The Big Idea

Under the proposed campaign slogan, “Enable Health”, the key message is that prevention is better than cure. The campaign aims to promote healthy living and help the needy overcome their health issues.

The overall campaign comprises of 3 strategies, Branded Content, Viral Content and Offline Activation.

Firstly, we will use a 3-pronged approach to answer goal #1, to increase shareability and engagement by improving social media content:

• Social media postings; NKF will collaborate with popular home-chefs, to post visually-attractive images of healthy recipes on NKF’s Facebook and Instagram

• YouTube videos; Video campaigns, especially those involving real-life stories, usually generate the most interest. NKF will start its own YouTube cooking channel, featuring cooking tips by NKF patients, employees and volunteers, peppered with light-hearted interviews

• A publication of the content generated; Interested donors can make donations or sign up for NKF’s LifeDrops to receive a copy of the publication, thus monetizing the content created

Next, we will adopt Viral Marketing using influencer marketing strategy to answer goal #2, raise awareness of NKF’s mission to champion for health:

• A fictional “food-blogger”, Natasha, will be created in Instagram to showcase her fictional life. Curated content will be added regularly to “build” Natasha’s character. Photos posted will feature Natasha eating delicious-looking but unhealthy food, accompanied by interactions with other Instagrammers.
• Once Natasha’s fan-base is sufficiently substantial, an announcement will be made through a viral video, revealing the true intent of the fictional character “Natasha Kevin Fong”: to spread awareness that we do not think much about our unhealthy eating habits and that for each “Like” Natasha gets, we are enabling ourselves to indulge in unhealthy food which potentially cause diseases.
• Through this campaign, we aim to empower our target audience to make a decision on their own to lead a healthy lifestyle, and for the press to pick up this story.

Lastly, to answer goal # 3 to build positive brand perception and increase donations, we will adopt offline event activation.

• To organise a yearly carnival called “Healthscape Fest”, targeted at health conscious millennials.
• It is a celebratory festival to thank all donors, staff and public for their support
• The carnival aims to generate media attention and stimulate donation revenue
• NKF can collaborate with booth vendors on a profit-sharing model. % of sales proceeds will go to fund NKF and its activities.
• The event is also supported by social media integration, complementing both offline with online marketing: By “Liking” and “Following” NKF’s social media pages, people can get a free polaroid at the “Dat Boothie Photo Booth” during the carnival, which will result in thousand of free impressions and publicity.

How effective are our ideas in solving the problem?

All in all, our strategies aim to achieve the aforementioned objectives to resolve the 3 main issues NKF have. Admittedly, these strategies comes with risks and limitations which are unavoidable.

For instance: Strategy 2 of Natasha Kevin Fong might be slow to pick up and might not garner mass interest. Success of the campaign may also be uncertain as such ideas have not been adopted locally before. However, given millennials’ culture of food-obsession, it is not impossible to form a strong basis for attracting followers.

As for strategy 3, while it was aimed to address NKF’s weak engagement with external stakeholders by organizing a festival for all, there might be many logistical issues for NKF’s small marketing team to undertake, and NKF might not have enough funding to organise a big scale event. While difficult, the proposed strategy is not infeasible. Event planning can be out-sourced to events management companies and corporate sponsors are available.