Heartlines

The #ValuesAndMoney campaign was an innovative solution that Flow Communications developed for Heartlines to help this award-winning non-governmental organisation (NGO) take its important work into the digital space.

Thanks to a concentrated campaign on Twitter, driven by the Heartlines account and four key influencers, the campaign went viral, reaching 2.7-million people – more than 10 times our target. More importantly, it opened up the honest and frank conversations we had set out to spark in the public space about how people’s values align with their financial decisions.

We are very proud of the work done on this campaign, borne out by the fact that #ValuesandMoney clinched a silver award for Most Viral Campaign by an Agency in the 2020 New Generation Social & Digital Media Awards.

Heartlines works with communities across South Africa to drive conversations around values. South Africans are overburdened with personal debt, which was made exponentially worse by the effects of Covid-19 and the ensuing lockdown. One of Heartlines’ projects, Values and Money (sponsored by Nedbank), promotes conversations around making wise financial decisions.

At its core, Heartlines’ approach centres on a belief in the power of storytelling, that as people share their experiences, they learn from each other and grow as a result of this kind of interaction.

In previous years, Heartlines facilitated exchanges and conversations for ordinary South Africans in communities across the country in person through workshops, church sermons and movie screenings.

The Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 changed all that. Suddenly, this NGO that relied on face-to-face interaction to put across its message had to figure out how to carry out its work in a different medium and achieve its target of reaching some 240 000 people through a digital campaign.

Heartlines approached Flow with this conundrum and we conceptualised the #ValuesAndMoney seven-day challenge, a creative and innovative campaign aimed at achieving the target through a concentrated week-long conversation, primarily on Twitter.

Our innovation lay in translating Heartlines’ storytelling approach into a campaign that encouraged the audience to tell stories and share their experiences and practical tips, via the Twitter platform.

We enlisted the support of four influencers whose personal brands were closely aligned to Heartlines’ brand, and they led and took part in these honest and frank conversations.

The campaign was a phenomenal success. At the end of seven days, the campaign had generated more than 38-million impressions and a reach of more than 2.7-million people. This was 1 000% more than our target of 240 000 people.

In addition, the campaign significantly boosted Heartlines’ Twitter account. After three consecutive months of losing followers on the account, Heartlines gained nearly 200 in seven days and saw its impressions soar to 240 000.

On the seventh and final day of the campaign, we led an hour-long Twitter chat from the Heartlines Twitter account that encouraged people to share their best and worst financial decisions. The chat generated 14-million impressions during the course of the hour.

We built our strategy on two key imperatives: achieving the targeted reach and driving authentic conversations that could be likened to the way in which the Heartlines team would approach this topic in its face-to-face engagements.

In order to help grow and strengthen Heartlines’ brand on social media, we felt it was important to bring in influencers such as Sindi van Zyl, Pontsho Pilane, Lesego Semenya and Ulrich Janse van Vuuren. We were strategic about choosing these influencers – we wanted people who would come across as authentic with their followers, and who genuinely believed in the importance of having honest discussions about money themselves.

We decided to keep the campaign going for a week, so that it didn’t come and go too quickly on people’s timelines, and each day seeded a different topic, from dealing with debt to making wise decisions when using credit. This helped keep it current and fresh, and assisted with driving viral engagement.

We designed a specific look and feel for the campaign so that it would stand out on Twitter, and a toolkit for the influencers, including memes for each day. We wrapped up the campaign with a Twitter chat at the end that generated a massive response around money and values – exactly what we were aiming for!

In addition, before the campaign, we ascertained that the hashtag #ValuesAndMoney was unique, so were able to ensure that its reach was entirely down to the Heartlines campaign.

Considering that Heartlines’ key performance indicator for us was to reach 240 000 people through a digital campaign, the result achieved in terms of reach surpassed the target set by Heartlines by more than 1 000%. In fact, we had surpassed the target by the end of the first day of the campaign!

Hashtag tracker Keyhole showed that the #ValuesAndMoney campaign recorded more than 38-million impressions over seven days. It also recorded a reach of 2.7-million accounts.