Oxfam
From Lukewarm to Hot
Crafting digital strategy to build the next generation of youth activism
Challenge
Oxfam approached Deepend to further develop their Youth Engagement Strategy, aimed at taking “cold” inactive young people, and turn them into a “hotter” audience that was directly involved with making the world a better place.
Cold youth audiences are notoriously difficult to engage with, having a carefree attitude toward life, and extremely low loyalty to brands. Oxfam needed a strategy that showed these young people what they could do, and how they could make a real impact on the world.
Hot youth audiences were scattered across the globe, contributing to making the world a better place in all sorts of ways. Their work was on the front lines of changing the world, and they are hard-core about what they do.
Hotter audiences didn’t respect the lifestyles and attitudes of colder audiences, and cold audiences felt intimidated by the hot, hard-core activists.
Response
Deepend reviewed Oxfam’s existing platforms for facilitating the transition from cool to hot, and developed an over-arching brand and digital strategy approach focused on the Three Things brand. Three steps to progressing in engagement: Care, Help, and Change.
The first step would be to invite colder audiences to care about the issues that are facing the world –engaging at an entry-level by simply “caring” about an issue, and idea, or an action.
Hotter audiences engaged directly in changing the world are always in need of help – this was step two. By opening up a direct communication channel between hot, activist audiences and the audiences who have ‘cared’ about a particular issue or idea, Deepend proposed a Help network of engaged participants around the globe.
Lastly, audiences who were ready to start changing the world in their own way were able to engage with the Three Things project to set up their own site.
Result
The strategy resonated particularly well with international activists who were constantly looking for support and help. Existing social tools allowed a cost effective deployment of a system that enabled the connection of these two audiences, and a hub of news and information from both relevant local news and international news.
Oxfam still successfully uses the Three Things branding to engage cold audiences, and build a larger network of people changing the world every day.
Related tags for the
From Lukewarm to Hot
Three things
Care, Help, Change
