The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation is putting a new spin on its ongoing campaign to promote literacy in Canadian elementary schools.
Rather than asking consumers for monetary donations, the Love of Reading Foundation has launched a “Top 10” campaign that asks Canadians to vote for the books they think should be in school libraries. After the contest closes on Feb. 28, Indigo will donate a set of the top picks to 225 schools across Canada. In addition, the foundation will donate $10,000 to a school that has been nominated through the website lor10.ca.
“Instead of asking people for money, we wanted to give them a reason to engage with us in a way that’s very meaningful to them,” said Jennifer Jones, VP of the Love of Reading Foundation. “Often the call to action is donate, and I think this is a refreshing way to still get the word out and give people an opportunity to show their support without having to open their wallets.”
The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation was started 10 years ago to solve the issue of underfunding in school libraries. To date, the foundation has committed more than $17.5 million to 1,800 elementary schools across Canada.
According to Indigo, a large number of Canadian children do not own a single book and school libraries are their only access to books. Current school-library budgets allow for about a third of a book per student.
“We still struggle with awareness at a national level, so we wanted to design a campaign that would let more Canadians know about the literacy issue in Canadian schools, the role that Love of Reading is playing in providing a solution and encourage people to get on board and help us,” said Jones. “It’s a call to action to help us put yet more books in the hands of more kids across Canada.”
Jones said literacy issues don’t have a lot of awareness because Canada has high university entrance rates and ranks fairly high on academic rankings. “And, of course, the audience that we are primarily talking to are literate, they are educated and they don’t see this as a struggle, ” said Jones.
“Literacy is not personal for the audience that can help us bring change,” she added. “It’s very unrelated to their day-to-day life, so a big part of what we have to do is actually educate that there’s an issue in the first place.”
The Top 10 campaign is the second phase of Love of Reading Foundation’s 10th anniversary celebration, which kicked off last September with its sixth annual Adopt-a-School program. The fundraiser asks Canadians to make monetary donations for selected schools at Indigo, Chapters and Coles locations, as well as online at AdoptaSchool.Indigo.ca. In celebration of the anniversary, Indigo gave away $10,000 to a school in each province.
Toronto agency Public helped create and develop the Top 10 campaign. It is supported by PR (MSLGroup and Public), in-store marketing, Indigo.ca, social media and a digital media buy.
A third phase of the campaign will launch in the spring.
