The charity, the Robin Hood Foundation, plans to introduce the campaign on Monday. The campaign, which includes radio commercials, outdoor ads and a presence in social media like Twitter, carries the assertive theme “Fight poverty like a New Yorker.”
The campaign seeks to stand out by celebrating archetypal Big Apple behaviors. There are references to New York-centric subjects like the subway, taxi cabs and bicycle messengers as well as the way native New Yorkers eat, walk and spend their leisure time.
The campaign also seeks to link the foundation to some quintessential New York attitudes like toughness, always being in a hurry and not suffering fools gladly.
The campaign is composed of paid and donated media placements that are valued at about $1 million. The campaign is being produced internally at the foundation by senior managers who include Bill Oberlander, a longtime creative executive at New York advertising agencies like JWT, Cossette, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy Mather and Kirshenbaum Bond.
The foundation joins a lengthy list of locally based advertisers that tried, or are trying, to sharpen their appeal in the New York market by addressing the intended audiences on the basis of shared geography, history, life style and mind-set.
For example, ads for the Crawford men’s clothing store chain asked in the 1930s, “Do New Yorkers know value?” The answer was, of course, yes, as shoppers “will be amazed at what $18.75 can buy in men’s clothing!”
Rheingold beer commercials in the 1950s include lyrics like “East Side, West Side, end of town and down, Rheingold extra dry beer is the beer of great renown” and “From Lexington to Madison and on both sides of Park, they ask for Rheingold extra dry before and after dark.” The Windows on the World restaurant ran ads in 1988 that carried this headline: “Why true New Yorkers won’t pay $1,000,000 for a co-op, $1,000 for a suit or $10 to park their car for half an hour.”
And the Boar’s Head Provisions Company sponsored a contest in 2010 called the Five Borough Sandwich Battle, to find the city’s best sandwich. (The winner was something called the Bronx Bomber.)
Media companies sometimes try to get in on the act, too, as illustrated by a recent article on the Complex.com Web site titled “Ten Ways to Pretend You’re a Native New Yorker.” The tips included “Never stop at the top of the subway stairs,” “Give tourists directions but make them work for it” and “Ignore the weather.”
Robin Hood, as the foundation styles itself in the ads, is getting ready to observe the 25th anniversary of its founding in 1988 by the hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones. To date, according to executives at the foundation, it has raised and donated $1.25 billion in the fight against poverty among New Yorkers, distributing the money to organizations like City Harvest.
In considering plans for “celebrating our anniversary, we looked around and saw how much is left to do,” says David Saltzman, executive director at the foundation.
That is captured by an ad that is part of the campaign, which carries the headline “The city will sleep when we’re done.”
The ads are also serving as a curtain-raiser for the foundation’s annual gala, which is scheduled for May 13 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. The 2012 gala raised more than $57 million, the foundation says.
The primary reason for the campaign’s arrival at this time, however, is the attention the foundation received after being chosen to distribute the money that was raised by the benefit concert held at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 12 for victims of Hurricane Sandy. More than $70 million has been given to 391 organizations in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, executives say.
“Robin Hood was well known in a small community, the financial community,” says Mark Bezos, senior vice president for communications, marketing and events at the foundation, who worked on the campaign with Mr. Oberlander.
Then, “along came Hurricane Sandy,” Mr. Bezos says. “It was a very public opportunity for Robin Hood to raise money and earn the trust of a lot of people.”
“Those who know our work are passionate about the organization,” he adds. “Those who are not terribly aware know our ability to raise a lot of money. We’re proud of that, but it’s what we do with the money that’s the important story.”
“We wanted to take advantage of the increase in awareness of the Robin Hood name, so we turned this campaign around quickly,” Mr. Bezos says. “With the scale of the problem we’re fighting, we’re trying to recruit foot soldiers.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/business/media/charity-promotes-a-new-york-state-of-mind.html?partner=rss&emc=rss