Community + Strategy - The Recipe to Changing the World through Corporate Community Involvement?

Combining strategy and community, the recipe for bettering our world through a corporate perspective. Sally Turney, one of the brains behind the Aviva fund, recently spoke to the Corporate COuncil on Volunteering on the Aviva Funds community project sponsorship program. In 2009, Aviva offered $500,000 to 8 organizations who proposed projects to be voted on by Canadians. Pre-launch they had hoped to see approximately 700 proposals however 2,128 proposals were submitted and Canadians voted over 2 million times to support their chosen project.

The interesting component to this amazing community development project, is that this was 100% a marketing campaign through Aviva. Through combination of strategic public relations operations, community relationships (such as the one with Free the Children and Craig Kielburger) media partnerships with CTV, MTV etc and a strong social media component Aviva was able to disseminate their brand in the context of civic responsibility, increase brand recognition and better Canadian communities.

The Aviva Funds incredibly execution of this campaign clears up any questions as to whether social media can be used effectively to promote brand awareness and recognition. With over 2 million votes for proposals and strategic branding of all components of the websites and social media avenue’s, Aviva was able to experience an increase in policy sales and an exponential increase in brand recognition. This campaign is a trendsetting program which has now inspired other major corporations to follow suit such as the Pepsi Refresh Everything challenge and incorporate social media as a strategic marketing campaign.

One might be wondering what is the true effect of the Aviva Fund campaign within their own business structure and more broadly within the corporate sector. Is this type of corporate sponsored community projects the new standard in corporate community involvement marketing? The answer is quite possibly, as social media becomes more and more important with a strong usage by both the “future clientele” demographic as well as increasing usage by Canada’s older population - the broad spectrum of the audience and effectiveness of message dissemination just might be where PR and marketing for corporate community involvement will be in the next five years.

Thoughts?