I actually liked what they are doing on their social media. There are certain reasons why I find the Equinox campaign thought provoking and interesting..

1. Equinox has a lot going on in their social media. So their marketing is not solely dependant on the donations given to NGO.

2. Equinox is already a very popular brand on social media. Their endorsing this NGO not only brings the NGO money but also publicity which is very important for any non-profit.

3. They are donating to Cycle for Limbs which is connected to Fitness. So there is a brand sync. This is important because it allows the community to rally around it in a way that is harmonious to the brands content strategy.

Most Importantly,

4. They are donating $1 for every fan. If they put Facebook ads they would be spending less than $1 for every fan. So they are actually donating more to the NGO than they would if they did the usual marketing!

That is why I feel at the end of the day the NGO really gains from this association and it adds a good touch to the whole Equinox social media campaign. It is a cool idea where part of the marketing budgets of corporates flows into non-profits.

What I don’t plan to do is to follow facebook pages which say they will donate Rs 1/- for every fan they get. I know this trend started out a long time back with Drew’s Cancer tweets being one of first and then many others also followed the trend.

Donate to causes sure – but if you are promoting your services by saying “oh you should use our services because we donate to an NGO” thats just lame. More than lame its playing with peoples guilt and good sentiment – and you are just generating business out of it.

The Ask Me campaign just seems in bad taste,

Lack of a Genuine Premise

One of the first such social media campaigns – the Drews Cancer campaign – there was a genuine premise there. I remember a similar campaign by Anaggh for Goonj and it was genuine and I also tweeted etc.. there. Moreover these were started by individuals as a small effort and then it snowballs.

Making Profit

Ads on Facebook to increase their fans would cost Ask Me atleast 5 INR. Here they are getting fans at such a cheaper rate. So the least they can do is donate all that they saved by not putting ads into the NGO – that would make it better. For a company like AskMe I find a donation of Rs 1 too small. After this campaign which they hope will go viral if they do get say for example 10,000 fans then they just pay 10,000 INR to the NGO. Isn’t that a wee bit small amount for a company to be donating?? And in return aren’t the increase in 10,000 fans a much bigger thing that the company is getting in return?