SMU’s Heart Beats for Haiti Initiative takes flight through social media
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After the destructive earthquakes in Haiti in January, SMU’s Student Senate began a program called SMU’s Heart Beats for Haiti. The idea is that donors pay money and get their name put on a heart, which is posted in Hughes Trigg. Your name is also posted on the SMU Website. For organizations the price is $1,000 for a heart. The money all goes to the Clinton-Bush Relief Fund. As far as advertising goes, I think that SMU students have really come together and put in a lot of time and effort to see this succeed. SMU’s Heart Beats for Haiti can be found on Facebook and many people have made comments about it on their twitter pages. Students volunteer to sell hearts everyday outside of Hughes Trigg. The campaign is unique, involved, and persuasive. It is a fine example of some local advertising here on campus.
1 Comments
February 1st, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Haynes, I agree with you that SMU’s Student Senate has done a fantastic job initiating this campaign for Haiti. I am already a member of the fan page on Facebook and looked at it just earlier today. It has 1,551 fans. Wow! It gives you opportunities to be involved (for example helping to make posters), however, one of the first posts was the simple directions of where to send checks to participate. Since the Student Senate is taking advantage of the Social Media network, it should also take an initiative to be “remarkable”. The creative touch is lacking for a cause and opportunity that should not be overlooked. Putting a creative twist would have been beneficial to this campaign from the “get-go” in order to make people more willing to donate to this terrible tradegy. I do give them credit for marketing towards our age group and selling tickets for Jay-Z’s upcoming concert for only $40. It’s a steal for a great cause.
The website for SMU’s Heart Beats for Haiti is http://smu.edu/studentsenate/haiti/ and states that you can donate through February 15th and it will be given to the Bush-Clinton Relief Fund. On the second tab states, “Whose Hearts Beats for Haiti?” The first name that comes up is our President, R. Gerald Turner, and his wife. It is a great start to setting an example for someone (or another organization) to donate and be proud to see their name on the website for the campaign. Although, the events should also be posted on the fan page so that social media users can be made aware in one visit to one site without having to click on many links to find out upcoming events. This great campaign can be developed using word of mouth marketing. It is also more than worth talking about – it is worth doing, which is a beneficial Word of Mouth marketing according to Sernovitz. It will be interesting to follow up on how other organizations on campus choose to raise money for SMU’s heart beats for Haiti.