What Are Melbourne Agency People Good For? Nothing.

Over the weekend Melbourne held it’s second edition of Good For Nothing. A movement of collaborative events held globally that consists of “10 hours of turbo-charged hacking, making & doing“. Digital creatives get together to help local social enterprises make a big impact online with their extremely limited resources!

I was privileged enough to participate in this year’s event after finding out about last year’s after it had already been and gone. Three awesome social enterprises were chosen to have volunteers craft a digital campaign for them based on their goals. All sorts disciplines were invited to come help, from design and copywriting, to SEO, coding, animation and PR.

I registered as a copywriter for the day. I had no idea what to expect. The Good for Nothing team did such a great job of curating the day with maximum productivity and creative collaboration!

It was a resounding success! 

I want to give a recap of the day and hopefully encourage other industry people to consider coming along next time! It was frantic, energic, fast-paced, stressful and a lot of fun!

The three social enterprises issuing their briefs on the day were Street Smart, For Dignity and Food Justice Truck. A quick summary we were given before the event:

 

• Food Justice Truck – the Food Justice Truck is a mobile fresh food market that welcomes all shoppers and a provides a 60% discount for people seeking asylum.Our task: develop a social media campaign with a killer strategy and really clever content that will increase engagement and work towards the Food Justice Truck becoming a sustainable social enterprise.

 

• Street Smart – a non-profit with a bold vision to end homelessness in Australia, Street Smart raise funds and awareness to bring about change for people experiencing homelessness or at risk.Our task: develop a campaign that grows their monthly giving program.

 

• For Dignity – an online boutique selling quality jewellery, bags, homewares and accessories made by those affected by human trafficking, offering them a life-giving source of income and dignity along with funding interventions for vulnerable communities.Our task: create a marketing and CRM plan, increase online traffic to web-store through SEO optimisation, optimise website to increase sales.

 

Graphic designer extraordinaire Lee Porter, and I, decided to faction off with about 8 others and get stuck into the Food Justice Truck campaign. It was a tough choice, they were all great initiatives and briefs. Not going to lie, there is just something kinda cool about a food truck that isn’t about slinging burgers to hipsters.

They can be found every Wednesday between 11:30 – 2 in the Melbourne CBD on Lonsdale Street, in front of Wesley Church, selling all sorts of healthy, fresh local produce. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a detour for a lot of city workers, and many would have no way of knowing it was there. Their sales in the CBD really help subsidise the losses of selling at a discount in other areas with high asylum-seeker populations.  We needed to think of ways to drive them more awareness and footfall.

The first part of the day was a roundtable brainstorm, using post-it notes to structure up ideas for a campaign. We began to think of the personas we were trying to raise awareness with… who was your average city office worker?

I use to work for Sensis on Lonsdale Street, so I had some insights here about the office culture, and what gets people’s attention. Basically smart-ass cheeky humour. There were some great ideas thrown around, eventually one of the producers who was working with us suggested “Breaks with Benefits”, encouraging office teams to use their Wednesday break for good, and come stock up on healthy fresh food for the office and home. A way and combat “slacktivism” without needing to do all that much!

SNACKTIVISM! (shh it’s a thing)

We used a bit of office humour to get this point across, and agreed that we should send out posters for teams to download, print and put up in the office kitchen/bathrooms. This involved us thinking of ways to get a laugh out of a corporate taking a toilet break, and get them to think about doing something different with their Wednesday lunch break.

I wrote some headlines for the posts and posters, including ones written expressly for the office toilets, laced with appropriate humour. Lee designed like a mad-woman (seriously – she was doing the work of, like 3 designers) and the rest of our team wrote eDMs, crafted social media kits and registration landing pages.

By 4pm we were ready to show off the finished product. And drink beer (thanks Sample!).

The Justice Food Truck volunteers were visually ecstatic with the results. Good vibes all round! The other two presentations were equally as awesome, hopefully kickstarting some growth for these great organisations.

If you want to sign up for the next Good For Nothing, head to their page and sign up an account. Next time a Melbourne (or Sydney) gig comes up, you’ll get an email. I can’t recommend it enough, the creative energy in the room was hard to describe! Also, follow the Food Justice Truck on Facebook, and go get some delicious fresh food for a cause!

Big congratulations to all involved, but especially Brigitte, Taryn, Andrew & Steve who ran the show ?