IT is not something many people will associate with being homeless. If you’re sleeping rough surely one of the last things you would need is an IT vendor. Eleven years ago Ken Deeks, founder of Byte Night and director of the Amber Group, set out to prove otherwise.
Byte Night is an annual event – which this year ran across five regions – where hundreds of people working in the IT industry in the UK give up their bed for a night to experience a little of what it’s like to be homeless to raise money for Action for Children.
The fundraising event is also a valuable networking opportunity for the nearly 700 people who took part this year, 300 of them in London alone. However Andrew Miller, director of Wilson Miller, who marketed this year’s event, says, “We want to make sure people are there for the right reasons so don’t want to push the networking side of the event too much.”
He explains that they take a different approach with different audiences: “When we target C-level audiences we tend to push the event slightly more as an opportunity to network with peers.”
Deeks founded the event 11 years ago with just 30 people, raising £30,000. Although he recognises the networking opportunity he says the primary reason people take part is, “because it is for a good cause and not for the networking.”
The marketing campaign
Technology marketing agency, Wilson Miller, took over the marketing for Byte Night for the first time this year. The campaign began at the end of March and as well as using traditional forms of marketing such as DM and trade press advertising, this year the communications agency decided to use social media, specifically networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
The use of social media had a big impact, says Barbara Gill, senior fundraising executive for Action for Children, “We needed to get with the times. Each region had its own Twitter stream and we saw a direct sign up because of it.”
Miller says using social media made the campaign more intimate and helped provide them with clean data, “We inherited a lot of data from the previous years and of course people would have moved companies or changed job roles. By setting up the LinkedIn group the onus is on people themselves to use correct data as LinkedIn is a career tool.” The group has roughly 300 members and is being used all year round. ‘Sleeper communication’ emails are also being sent to participants on a monthly basis, keeping them updated on the amount raised and where it’s going.
Big brands, big outcomes
The campaign’s biggest marketing success this year was arguably the ‘sales tool kits’ given to companies once they signed up to be sleepers, allowing companies to have personalised email signatures, web banners and flyers. Wilson says this form of self promotion proved extremely beneficial: “If we were to market the event to Cisco and they signed up and used our sales tool kit, not only would they get sponsors but it would generate interest from other companies and lead them to sign up as sleepers too.”
The presence of large IT brands at this year’s event indicates that the mix of word-of-mouth marketing and social media worked well. Oracle, BT, HP, Citrix, Symantec, Dell and Ernst & Young all attended.
Prizes such as concert tickets, fine dining experiences and even Domino’s pizzas were auctioned off on the night, helping raise this year’s fundraising total to £540,000.
Every year the event attracts several celebrities. This year Michael Fish gave a weather forecast at the London event. According to Miller, participants there were luckier than those in Scotland and Newcastle who got a bit wet and pretty cold. The Railway Children actress Jenny Agutter supports the event every year and is an ambassador for Action for Children. Angus Deayton and Ian Hislop have also previously supported the event.
Considering the celebrity following the event seems to have, celebrity sponsorship would seem like the natural next step but Miller expresses reservations, saying, “It could cause problems if they were to drop out and we don’t want people to be involved in the event just so they can meet a celebrity.”
