VOLUNTEER

Description of the role: A Volunteer brand gets its followers to stand up and be active for a shared cause. The cause may be related to the brand’s business, history, environment, role in its community or its mission. True Volunteer brands do not just stand for a cause but get people to do it themselves, too. They are there to issue a topic and start the conversation but they let followers do the talking and spread the word.

SOS Children’s Villages India – Chatpat

SOS Children’s Villages in India were facing a severe problem as their expenses were rising but donations were not. Stable and continuous donations are crucial for being able to provide thousands of orphaned and abandoned children with a better future.

They knew large corporations could make sizable donations from their marketing budgets. To get a small share of the budget they created a new kind of influencer, Chatpat, a 10-year-old street kid. He and his friends starred in remakes of Indians’ most iconic ads, which soon went viral on social media. “We did something cool

Motivators for followers: Altruism, helping others for your brand, now you can do something for ours.” And the donations started pouring in.

Stereotype of a Volunteer brand: Brands that have a connection to a movement, ideology, or cause. And NGOs, of course.

Then, companies big and small started asking for a remake of their own. Chatpat’s videos got SOS Children Village over 1506% rise in the brand impression, but most of all they got a 61,5% rise in the corporate donations, resulting in 300.000 USD, and counting.