The Jane/Finch Centre (JFC) and creative agency Angry Butterfly have devised a clever twist for the community centre’s latest fundraiser designed to appeal to everyone’s inner Robin Hood.
Every Amazon Prime member receives $3.50 every month to donate to their favourite personalities on Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch. Many Prime members – especially those who don’t regularly use Twitch – are either unaware of this fact or let their money go unused, so the goal of the campaign is to get people to send it to a JFC Twitch account that has been set up instead.
To make that proposition more engaging, Angry Butterfly has created “Bill It to Bezos,” a campaign that casts the titular billionaire and founder of retail giant Amazon who serves as the “foil” of its messaging. As an AI-generated likeness of Bezos explains in a campaign video, sending that $3.50 to JFC not only supports the community centre, but is a way to get one over on him by ensuring that money doesn’t go back into his pocket.
The goal, according to Angry Butterfly partner and CCO Erin Kawalecki, was to devise a campaign that is more than just “a pure awareness play,” all while allowing people to support the centre without having to put down any additional funds from their own pocket.
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“When we landed on the Twitch/Amazon Prime donation mechanism, we felt it would not only be a unique way to do fundraising, but that we could tell a story that would be pretty compelling, given who the Amazon founder is,” Kawalecki explains. “Right now there’s a lot of discussion about income inequality and whether it’s okay that some people have billions of dollars in the bank while so much of the population is barely able to afford the cost of living. We thought by being part of that discussion, and using a tech billionaire who’s famous for his yachts and recreational space travel as our ‘villain,’ that the Jane/Finch Centre might find its way into more conversations and therefore be able to educate more people about the great work that they do.”
“When we heard the idea from the Angry Butterfly team, we were both excited and nervous,” says Michelle Dagnino, JFC’s executive director. “Once we learned more about how the mechanics worked, we realized it was an incredible and innovative way to not only raise money through the platform, but also generate buzz, and in turn raise awareness (and further donations) for the centre.”
The campaign launched today with videos on Twitch, YouTube and other social platforms, with influencer support. All of the campaign materials lead to its microsite.
