It started with a simple idea. We wanted to donate money the global Haiti relief efforts. There wasn’t much – but enough to make a difference in some of the lives of a few Haitian families. Usually that would be enough to pick up a phone and donate. However we wanted to try to do more and push each dollar as far as we could to not only donate but raise awareness. So we did what we do best – got creative and decided “Hey, let’s wrap a campaign around this pledge drive and see how it works out”.

The ask was simple: Ask other creative people (artists, photographers, designers) to donate some of their time to create a single unique piece of artwork with a heart theme – we called them “Heart-Art”.

The mechanism was as easy as 1-2-3: We uploaded the work to a single photo album on our Facebook fan page and invited people to become a fan, pick a piece of “Heart-Art” they loved and photo tag their friends name on the picture. For every tag made Miner Thought pledged to donate a $1 to the Haiti Relief fund. In essence we asked Facebook users to share their heart.

On the social experiment side the campaign was pushed via twitter feeds, shared album and photos within Facebook and from users seeing that they had been tagged in the work – naturally making them click through and learn about the project. Upon learning the concept many who were originally tagged quickly became involved and tagged more. Like a wild fire it spread through Facebook organically and quickly the message and work reached other users. Additionally we ran a North American based facebook banner ad campaign to raise awareness during the event.

The Results:
In just over 72 hours since launching on Saturday Morning on January 30th Tag A Heart for Haiti was a success, breaking all our expectations. The fan page went from 2 to 124 fans and the initial donated artwork doubled for a total of 26 original “Heart-Art” pieces. Our target goal of $500 for 500 tags was reached by the mid afternoon that Tuesday in less than 4 days – seeing over 500 photo tags. Many of the artworks reached their 50 tag per image Facebook implemented limit in the first 24 hours.

Finally to add to the success of the project our friends at Dashboard Communications doubled the donation which in turn was doubled by the government. What does that mean? It means measurable interactions = relief in a grass roots campaign put together with a few creative people from across North America and raised $2000 which was donated to World Vision Canada.

Not bad for a weekend.