Mavis Brown squirrelled away more than $4 million in secret during her remarkable life, pledging it to a new charitable trust she created through her will.
But the secret is well and truly out after more than 23,000 people read her story through Equity Trustees’ latest philanthropic marketing campaign.
It has all the elements of great content: a compelling personal story about an ordinary person doing something truly extraordinary. A free-wheeling spirit who overcame adversity and left a legacy that will fund generations of South Australian students who may otherwise struggle to attend university.
Equity Trustees’ General Manager, Marketing and Communications, Alicia Kokocinski, says the story not only highlights Equity Trustees’ philanthropic work, but helps breaks down the common misconception that philanthropy is only for the wealthy or famous.
“The vast majority of the trusts we manage were set up by ordinary people like Mavis Brown who in some ways left a message in a bottle about something they believed in. Telling a compelling story engages people and gives them a way into philanthropy,” she says. “It also reinforces our company’s values and what we stand for – our job is to honour and protect the legacies of our clients – the best way to do that is to ‘show not tell’; creating shareable content is exactly that strategy in action.”
Multi-channel distribution maximises content value
Equity Trustees appointed Collaborative Media & Publishing (CMP) to write Mavis Brown’s story as part of its 60-page annual Giving Review, along with 16 other philanthropic case studies.
But Kokocinski, a former journalist, could tell the Mavis Brown story was something special.
She distributed it, along with five other stand-out stories, across multiple channels. They included EDM campaigns, sector-specific publications, social media channels, philanthropic partners, and sponsored advertising through mainstream media websites like MSN.
After initially being published in Equity Trustees’ Giving Review in December last year, it was re-published on the Equity Trustees website in early-2021, and finally in its Generation magazine in March 2021.
The combination – as well as A-B testing to find the most effective headline (“The runaway who left a $4m legacy for SA kids“) – resulted in more than 23,000 clicks.
That ultimately guided readers back to the Giving Review, where they could explore more stories about how Equity Trustees distributed $91 million in total grants and bequests during the year. It also helps the Equity Trustees’ team strengthen ties with its philanthropic partners and reach new clients.
“I’m trying to create context so that when our people in each of the business units (in this case philanthropy) go out, they can point to content or hand it to people to think about. It’s content that is easy for others to pass on – because it’s interesting.”
Finding the ‘real’ Mavis Brown
Rather than apply more pressure to her small marketing team, Kokocinski turned to CMP to remove the potential “pain point” of producing high-quality, specialised content under deadline pressure. We produced 17 diverse case studies highlighting the impact of Equity Trustees’ philanthropic activities and copy-edited the final publication.
“I need it to be exactly right because I’m thinking about how it’s going to look externally, how I can structure a campaign, and I’m also thinking about how it’s going to look and feel to our internal stakeholders who in turn are managing their relationships, so the actual doing of the work is a pain point I need to be able to hand over to really top notch writers who can get on my wavelength quickly.”
Writing the Mavis Brown story involved multiple interviews over the phone and email with her niece, Trudyanne Brown, who also shared some family photos. The CMP team then crafted the story using our standardised production process.
Each case study involved speaking to people from the organisations which had received funding and the Equity Trustees philanthropy specialists who worked with them.
We regularly use these journalism skills to produce content such as news and feature articles, event coverage, ghost-written thought leadership and reports specifically for financial services companies.
“A lot of Equity Trustees’ services are difficult to describe in really simple terms, so I know that’s a big ask when I’m looking for people who could potentially do work for us in the marketing and comms space,” Kokocinski says.
“That’s why I find writers that can do the job, help the story get out of the weeds of technical or internal jargon, and not need me to constantly go over the material to re-do or explain things.”