A colleague just bought me a couple of live chickens for Christmas and I was thinking where on earth I was going to put them. My landlord doesn’t allow pets! I then realised that they weren’t exactly for me, but rather for a small farming village in Samoa. It’s Christmas time and instead of companies giving hefty priced throw-away gifts for clients, some are opting for the charity kind. It’s not like we need another squeezy ball with someone’s logo blazed across it.
Oxfam sent me an email with the subject heading “A gift From Oxfam Unwrapped”. If it wasn’t for the email brand value of Oxfam, I would not have opened that email as it suspiciously looked like spam for a split second.
Oxfam’s email stated “A gift has been bought and sent to you by a friend”. Which friend? If this is for real, wouldn’t they display my friend’s name at least? This email initially felt like an e-card sent from a random stranger, but with a lure of a “gift”, curiosity got the better of me and I had to click further to find out what it was.
I was confused when I first arrived at the Oxfam page. It had all the right visual clues that it was a trustworthy message with the use of Oxfam New Zealand branding, but my first reaction was “huh?, what is this?”.
In typical web browsing style, I scanned the page looking for key words to learn more about it. Two headings stood out “I’ve bought you a pair of chickens…” (despite there being 3 chickens on the page) and “It’s time to start a coop”. The rest of the writing above the scroll line was quite small and didn’t entice me to read further. It was difficult to read.
I scrolled down the page and saw that there was a personal message, although I scanned it several times to realise it was from one of Netconcepts’ business partners Anna Curnow from Copy Ant.
Unfortunately the Oxfam message did not keep its formatting and for a copy writer such as Anna, it may have disappointed her to see her message displayed like that.
Click here to view the Oxfam Unwrapped Message
Despite this campaign not being optimised to its full potential, it was a wonderful gift to receive and Netconcepts really appreciates values based organisations and team members.
Well done to Oxfam New Zealand for undertaking such a campaign to raise funds for such a worthwhile cause. With a few more tweaks here and there, the experience of the campaign for the end user would have been seamless. Remember to undergo user testing with real people before fully launching campaigns to uncover any unseen obstacles.
Most of all, I love my chickens and I’m sure that the family who receives them will get much use from them. Thank you Anna for a wonderful gift!