Meaningful and Creative Holiday Season Customer Engagement
Companies across the country see both opportunities and challenges in addressing the holiday season with employees and customers. Over time, we’ve seen a shift from extravagant parties, multi-color cards, and gifts of magnums of bubbly, to more email based greetings, volunteer engagement, and donations instead of swag. This is good. What you will read about below, is GREAT.
Small Company Established with KickStarter Sets a High Bar
Every holiday season, the decidedly adult, independently owned card game presents an epic shared experience for its fans. Each one suits its culture and image – snarky, intelligent, creative, progressive, and exclusive. 2017 brought us: Cards Against Humanity Redistributes Your Wealth. The objective was to address “the world’s biggest social issue”: wealth inequality. The campaign was dubbed Cards Against Humanity Saves America. 150,000 customers sent in $15 to participate, having no idea what surprise it would garner. They all received an articulate message, which launched with,
“Today, 8 men own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of humanity. One in 5 US households has zero or negative wealth. That is truly F***ed.” [They did not use asterisks.]
When subscribers registered, they completed a survey, which was used to figure out who most needed money. They didn’t know what the survey questions were for, and they included red herrings like, “What’s your favorite pizza topping?” Of the 150,000 players, 140,000 got nothing but the email explanation. The next 9,900 got a full $15 refund. The poorest 100 people each got $1,000, and were invited to share what that meant for their lives.
*My husband and I are responsible for my ‘parentless’ niece, and my mother who has stage IV cancer. This money will allow all of us to breathe a little easier.
*This will stop my worrying that I’m just one emergency away from disaster.
*I am a disabled/special needs student and will use this to buy school supplies. It will also help me save up for a visit to my family, who I haven’t seen in 3 years.
*I am numb. I was laid off on August 1 and have been job hunting daily. This will allow me to drive places to find a job because I can now buy tires.
Using Data to Uncover Needs and Develop Solutions
This begs the question – how did CAH know who was most needy? It’s not perfect, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s likely a duck. The survey provided plenty of clues, so they crunched the data. Weighting was: 33% Census information from their home address 15% Race, Gender, Education to estimate income based on Bureau of Labor Stats 15% Occupation, using Bureau of Labor Statistics median salary data 10% Health, extra weight for people who said they were in poor or fair health 10% Debt, particularly medical bills or student loans 10% Stress, based on survey responses about financial and other worries 5% Smoking, which is highly correlated with poverty 2% Eating habits, people who ate out “never” or “infrequently” scored higher.
Social and Psychological Assumptions
In true Cards Against Humanity fashion, they owned up to excluding some people: 1. All Canadians – “they already have universal healthcare” 2. People who completed the survey in under a minute – “they were probably lying” 3. Minors and anyone who said they were 99 years old 4. Anyone who checked every race offered or “prefer not to answer” 5. People who said they were stressed about everything, including alligators 6. Participants who indicated they were “stressed about nothing” or had “no debt”
To make this campaign a complete Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, they close with:
“What You Can Do to Help Solve Wealth Inequality. “The most important thing is to support candidates who are working to fight inequality.”
CAH included links to 3 nonprofits that are addressing the problem from the ground up: MoveOn.org, Americans for Tax Fairness, and Student Debt Crisis.
Cards Against Humanity clearly informed, engaged, and inspired action in the fight for income equality. I hope this Hartz & Minds inspires you to be purposeful and creative in bringing your personal and professional assets to bear for the betterment of our world.