Brand Engagement

Karam Foundation’s official website design offers an easy navigation and a very interactive experience.  They are using a parallax design style adopted by numerous big brands.  This is a design that permits the visitor to keep scrolling down for more information, rather than navigating different pages by clicking on different buttons. 

All important information has been made available in one page, this ensures the organization’s mission and projects are clear to the visitor, and encourages user engagement.

The brand personality is reflected in the colors and fonts used for the website design.  Karam tackles the worst humanitarian crisis today; their choice of black, white and blue for colors is subtle, respectful and loud.  The somber colors give a chance for all the powerful images to be the focal point and what is meant to resonate the most with potential donors.

The media team at Karam encourage audience engagement by showcasing its smallest aid recipients, children.  This always sparks empathy, ignites that fiery need to be involved, make a difference, the very message in Karam’s mission.

In a very emotional and moving campaign, Karam uses the hashtag #Notinvisible to spread the idea that we as humanity are all affected by the crisis in Syria.  That the moment we start to think as one, “WE” can break barriers and defeat evil.  This campaign was spear headed by the Karam’s project called Zeytouna.  Volunteers dedicated their time in teaching these children languages, music and providing medical health screenings and fun activities.  A beautiful four-minute video is published on the main page to promote the success of this project.

Karam uses the traditional social media buttons at the bottom of the page for convenient connectivity to their social media accounts.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Medium are the platforms used.  The Medium account serves as the organization’s blog with articles, news and staff postings.  As for Facebook & Twitter the organization uses the platform to further its fund raising mission.  The social media team puts a cleaver business/holiday twist to their fund raising campaign by including black Friday deals. 

This is a fun way to engage donors in what is considered the most generous time of the year.  What better way to feel holiday cheer than by providing a winter package for a refugee for only $20!

Karam also uses Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday to raise funds.  They are also bringing back a fun and less gloomy campaign: Mustache Mad  This is another way to encourage donor engagement to raise awareness and of course funds.  The organization is not shy about using hashtags and trending keywords to stay up to date with social media trends.

The social media accounts are directly and strongly asking for a response from visitors, fans and donors alike.  Direct links, pictures and videos are made easily available for those wanting more information.  Each media platform is cross-connected to the other, where the website publishes videos from the YouTube channel and Facebook picture posts take you to Instagram and so on.  The organization ensures an all encompassing experience for potential donors to immerse them this giving an compassionate mood, that feeling of “I need to do more”

In Young’s Brand Media Strategy book, he defines communication planning in chapter 3 as the best way to influence readers, visitors in our case donors.  He compares it to Media Planning, which serves to only deliver the message.  “Communications planning allows a more strategic way of determining key media choices and connection strategies.  It is about moving away from the job of delivering messages to audiences and moving toward better understanding of how consumers receive and respond to communication” (Young, 32)

With this analysis of Karam’s communication planning, it is clear they have an organized and well-defined message.  The means to delivering the message is also well thought of to cater to the most trendy of users and donors from all age groups and demographics.  They emphasize ease of usability, and an inviting atmosphere to engage and care.