WeFeedback: Sharing Food, Changing Lives
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 2:07PM After several months in the works, we are very pleased to announce that the United Nations has officially launched a new online campaign to raise awareness for its World Food Program. While many organizations are still debating the merits of social media, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)—the largest humanitarian agency in the world—is embracing it to help eradicate hunger and malnutrition around the globe.
It started last fall when The Duffy Agency and TAAN, the Transworld Advertising Agency Network, were approached by the United Nations to help promote the WFP brand globally and raise funds around World Food Day. Instead of simply running a fundraiser for a week, we suggested creating a community that would raise funds and contribute to the WFP’s brand awareness 24/7 year round. We backed our proposal with a strategic framework that showed how we could leverage social media while building a sustainable branded concept. Once that got the green light we jumped into the creating the logo, campaign strategy and online assets (final coding was handled by the UN). The result is WeFeedback.org.
At the center of the campaign is the WeFeedback website. What makes WeFeedback.org different from other donation sites is that it asks visitors to do more than donate money. It also asks them to donate their social media networks.
“We hope everyone who visits the site makes a donation, but they can help just as much by letting people in their networks know about WeFeedback.org,” said Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, head of Web for the WFP.
The site uses social media to raise awareness of how the food we all take for granted can actually be used as a catalyst to help starving people around the world. Donations are a big part of the site. But it’s aim, first and foremost, is to become a community platform to raise awareness as well as donations.
It works like this: The site features a calculator where people enter their favorite snack and are told how many children they could feed if they donated the value of that snack back to WeFeedback. Visitors to the site are encouraged to fill out a profile. This provides them with an identity on the site. By linking with their accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google and LinkedIn, they can easily invite their friends to join. They can see what their network has contributed, and through bing maps, can also see what other members in their neighborhood are donating. Member activity is shared over their social networks and earns them badges on the site. There is also a WeFeedback widget visitors can add to their websites and blogs to further drive awareness and donations.
The Feedback calculator is the primary donation mechanism in the beta site. But it is just the beginning. The plan moving forward from the beta site is to evolve it into a community dedicated to bringing people together around the topic of food in a fun and engaging way. In fact, our vision is to evolve the site into a truly collaborative community by adding more interactivity between members and facilitating them to join together and find their own food-oriented events to raise funds for WeFeedback.
The WeFeedback campaign integrates dozens of elements including:
- A calculator that converts your favorite snack into meals for kids
- Reward badges when you reach different levels participation
- Private and public profiles
- Bing map integration to see FeedBack from your neighborhood
- Sharing across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google
- Donation Widget that can be embedded in other sites
- Email marketing
- Shareable facts about world hunger
Additional features are in the works. Since the websites release, it has already caused a stir online with an excellent article by Mashable.
You've probably heard the phrase "social media for social good." Never has this phrase been more true than for WeFeedback. Five minutes on WeFeedback.org can make a huge impact for over one billion people globally who are battling starvation every day. That’s because simply joining will convert your social network into a solution for world hunger. Together, you and WeFeedback will help the WFP raise awareness and achieve its goal to end chronic hunger and undernutrition forever.
WeFeedback is in Beta right now. After you check out (and hopefully join) WeFeedback.org, come back and give us your opinion or suggestions on how to improve the site.
Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.
How Can You Help? There are four easy steps you can take to help make this campaign a roaring success
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