Inquiry Three: Research Blog 4

Hall, Holly. "Wildlife Fund Turns To Facebook To Promote Holiday Catalog." Chronicle Of Philanthropy 23.4 (2010): 3. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 July 2012.

This article discusses the decision of the charity World Wildlife Fund to use Facebook as way of promoting their campaign to adopt animals. The organization talks about how they have a large fan base on Facebook, and they hoped that by integrating a feature that allowed people to share with their friends the animal they just adopted would encourage more people to get involved with the organization. They also launched their campaign during the holidays, to market their idea that friends and relative should adopt animals in family and friend’s names as a gift. I thought this was a good example of kairos, and these rhetorical techniques are something I plan on discussing in my paper. The campaign also takes place primarily on a social media site, intending for the audience to be the users of that site. I think that the digital marketing campaign contributed to this charity’s success, and can be a good example of a digital approach of philanthropy. The article also brings up the influence that friends on Facebook could be a big influence on anyone who reads about the donating to the World Wildlife Fund by explaining, “Now people who "like" an animal in the catalog or who adopt a species by making a donation can alert their Facebook friends, leave a note about their experience in supporting a species, and send electronic cards to those in whose honor they have donated.” This creation of interaction between Facebook friends could “help the charity reach large numbers of donors' friends online--and spark new donations from some of the 500 million people around the world who now use Facebook.” I really like this article because it focuses on the topic of social media’s influence in charity campaigns, the same type of influence seen in the Kony video that serves as the basis for this paper. I plan on using this article as an example of how charity campaign are interacting with and reaching out to new members.