For those of you who use Google on a daily basis (read: everyone), you may have noticed a nifty little popup on the page’s header. It’s not intrusive, it just reads a line in plain text with a call to action.
Help refugees and migrants in urgent need. Google will match your donation.
Do you know how many people will see this banner? A lot— given that their daily page view is 7.2 billion. I think it’s a wonderful campaign, leveraging their position as a widely visited site.
On the other hand, accompanying this banner is a blog post on the official Google blog. Instead of reiterating the facts of the refugee crisis, it puts a personal touch on the issue by getting their Product Marketing Manager, Rita Masoud, to share her experiences as a refugee. They’re no longer outsiders who are seen as doing this for just marketing efforts, but are actually a part of the community affected by the crisis and warrants their participation.
The simple act of pressing the call to action leads you to a page with more info. Now, seeing 1-to-1 donation matching from a trusted site makes me less wary of the campaign. But nonetheless, I read through which charities the money was to go to, as well as some more info in their FAQ.
Then I caught the following little snippet in the questions section:
It’s not much to ask for given that your good deed will be doubled by Google. But you can bet that when the goal is reached, this significant sum of money will not go unnoticed by both the refugees, and the press!
Update: On September 18th, after 3 days of launching this campaign, Google met their goals with the public’s help. $5.5 million was matched with the public’s donation, meaning total efforts amounted to $11 million.
