TWCxStaged Recap
If you like unnecessary details, poorly lit behind the scenes photos, and more stats than you could possibly know what to do with my god do we have the blog of your dreams today! We’re talking ALL things TWCxStaged from how it was conceptualized to the final (very special) package going out.
How we pitched and planned
We were somewhere in late October when the Christmas campaign we had been working on was proving to be too difficult given some tight timelines. We decided to switch gears at that time and look a little further down the road so we had more time to plan for something much larger. We knew at that point that we wanted to pitch a Staged campaign featuring the four main cast. We also knew we wanted to aim for Michael’s birthday as Staged2 would have finished airing by then and we could realistically be ready by that date. It seemed like a dream at the time, a really good idea but A LOT of unknowns. We did some preliminary looking around at products, a lot of brainstorming about our financials, made sure Michael was okay with the date, and did some daydreaming about promoting it before we even mentioned the Staged concept to any of the artists.
If you’ve ever done any work with us you know we love using Google Docs. Literally no one else likes them (some actively can’t stand them) but we do, it’s how we manage all of our planning. We officially pitched the concept to both sets of artists in mid-November using one central doc that contained timelines and everything the artists would need to know including our strategy and goals. Michael and Anna came on board first with the Tennants following closely behind. We can confirm again that everyone received the same set of instructions and were of course allowed to interpret them however they wished! We can also confirm the word “simple” was part of the instructions and nearly everyone did a really excellent job with that! We absolutely wouldn’t change what anyone did because they’re all so uniquely them and were a joy to carry.
We managed to pick up Michael and Anna’s drawings in late November (shoutout to Kari!), and received Georgia and David’s a week later, affording us plenty of time to clean the drawings and to start laying them out on products. We were actually ahead of schedule for awhile and that’s worth celebrating because we are never ahead! Cleaning Michael’s drawing took 2 full days due to the color of the paper (it was done on the back of a script!), the size, and some environmental factors on the paper. The others took 3-5 hours. Another shoutout to our London-based friend that got those Tennant originals scanned in and sent off to our resident artist Clo to be turned into high-res digital files.
The originals
Each of them presented their own unique challenges, none more so than Michael’s
Anna and David both did theirs in pencil prior to inking over them so we had some extra cleaning to do on the digital files to make sure double lines weren’t printed on some of the items. Cleaning involves erasing pixels around lines to ensure a crisp finish, as you can imagine with the detail in Michael’s design this was a daunting task.
How we decided on products
December was our product and budget-setting month. We initially budgeted $6,000 for the campaign, a number we believed would generate roughly $22,000 in donations. We received samples, held working sessions frequently with the team to discuss ideas, and plotted dozens of possible bundles. We asked for participation in a product survey that proved to be incredibly helpful and was the driving factor in our decision to select enamel pins, a product we thought was high-risk but also high-reward.
We spent 2 weeks working on the enamel pin designs and after several back and forths we were able to settle on the final designs. Michael’s pin, as you can image, was the more difficult one. We had several questions about why pins were only available as a bundle add-on and it was all down to cost and how popular we thought they would be. Selling them as one-offs had the potential to create a very low margin for us because of international shipping costs and after all the work we had put in and the upfront cost we invested to get them, we needed to ensure our margins were high. Placing them as a bundle add-on only made them our highest margin product and was a notable contributing factor in our increased average donation amount.
The way we decided which designs would go on which products was the result of extended analysis and research. We had planned for about $3,500 in product costs during our budget sessions and did an incredible amount of work making sure we could maximize our returns for that cost. We knew which combinations for bundles would sell best, which designs would sell enough to make our bulk costs lower for any given product, and we even placed items into bundles based on weight to help us lower our shipping costs! We weren’t going to leave anything up to chance as we knew this would be our most expensive endeavor yet (even after all of that planning we had no idea it was going to be as big as it was!)
We also spent significant time talking to friends of the project about how to run an “Angel Donor” program during the campaign so those unable to participate could still receive items thanks to their very own angel. We decided on a single bundle to be offered through this program to ensure everyone received the same items.
An interesting timeline note: it was right around this time that we were given permission to use the name ‘Staged’ in our materials, a move that really allowed us to create some excellent promotion!
How we promoted
In December we laid out a schedule to tease a new artist every Friday until the first of the year so we could announce the full campaign line-up right as Staged2 was premiering.
This teasing was thoroughly planned as we wanted to find our way into the fandoms of Georgia and David Tennant as early as possible without giving everything away too soon. We were also hyper-aware of needing to give people enough time to plan and save so that factored into our decision to start teasing a birthday campaign as early as we possibly could. We did not want anyone to feel left out or unprepared.
We even had a special profile picture for 2 weeks leading up to the final announcement, courtesy of Michael’s fabulous talents.
Another round of google docs for each artist in January helped us settle on schedules for promotion on both Twitter and Instagram.
At this point the two charities had been selected by the artists and we got to work meeting with them, researching, working on wording and promo graphics, and making sure everyone was ready for launch day. We met some amazing folks working for both charities and we’re immensely grateful for their time, enthusiasm, and support throughout this process.
For our main promotional material we pitched the idea of a video. Several scripts were written for the main launch video but one was ultimately decided on. Honestly all of the good or funny bits were entirely down to their improv (hi Simon) and Michael’s standalone videos were done without any scripts! That additional footage allowed for quite a bit of flexibility in how we promoted in the days leading up to launch.
We had 1 week to edit down all of the footage of both Michael alone and the Michael/David footage. Our team member Rehza did a heroic job on what was a VERY difficult edit as we had a lot of footage to organize, cut down, and chunk for different platforms/lengths.
Both Michael and David did such a fantastic job with our direction and the script (they should really think about becoming actors) and honestly that week was just a full blown dream scenario for us. We also had a chance to talk to the incredibly kind Dan Gage and Alex Baranowski and received permission to use the music we needed, the perfect finishing touch. The coordination between all 4 artists, the charities, and our team really came together better than we ever could have hoped for, particularly in the final week or so, and we genuinely can’t thank everyone enough for their hard work to make that a reality. A particular shoutout goes to Michael for everything he did to help, especially in the stressful days leading up to launch, that kindness meant so much.
Our launch day promotion line-up
How we ran the campaign
Our manual process for taking orders is intentional. It’s not as easy as an open store but we do that so we have close control over inventory and to make sure we have direct contact for donation purposes. We did not anticipate the rush that we saw on launch day. We truly did not stop taking orders until we went to bed some 12+ hours after launch. We passed our goal, our stretch goal, and were very quickly approaching our budget limits just within the first 8 hours. Because all items were pre-order we had some flexibility in our inventory but that meant we had to keep an eagle eye watch on our expenditures as each order was placed. We calculate costs real-time as orders are placed using formulas for shipping costs + item costs at different bulk levels. At any given moment we knew what we were going to be spending and were ready to pull the plug if we had to.
Saturday morning when we woke up to over 100 orders waiting to be placed we had a bit of a panic moment. To our amazement and never ending gratitude, so many people heard our call for help and pitched in to keep the store open for another few days. In total, TWC received over $4,000 in donations to keep this campaign charging ahead, allowing for hundreds more people to join and over $16,000 in additional donations to be generated! That generosity is something we will never forget. When we say every little bit helps, we really mean it. For every dollar you gave us we generated 4x that amount for these charities. We weren’t able to stay open for the full two weeks but making it one week was all down to you guys.
And another bit of generosity we can’t forget: every single person that signed up for the angel program was matched with a donor! That’s what this community is about and we don’t want that to get lost in all of the excitement, you all are SO fantastic.
How we manually track donations real-time as proof is submitted
How we shipped
For this campaign the two owners of this project were able to be together at TWC HQ, allowing for 10 straight days of packing and shipping. It was an exhausting, wonderful, delirious time. We packed in small chunks of 20-30 packages at a time and then did the customs forms and labels. We do not use a specific order for packing but instead do batches of “easy” packages and then “hard” ones. It helps keep some balance as there were over 3 million different combinations of products a package could have contained, forcing us to be diligent, focused, and constantly double checking the nearly 600 packages we shipped. We do not keep enough inventory on hand nor did we have the budget room to mix up a t-shirt size or forget to send an item.
An example of one of several picklists we maintain. We group packages together based on contents or shipping location. It helps us keep track of everything that goes into a package so we don’t forget to pack something!
Our total shipping cost for non-flat orders. We had roughly 80 orders that shipped via envelope or large envelope that were processed in person at the USPS. In total, we came in $200 less in shipping than we had calculated real-time during the run of the campaign.
More thoughts and numbers
In total we spent over $10,000 on this campaign (that includes what was donated to us) and we landed close to our goal of a 4x return on our investment when we crossed over the $40,000 raised mark. We learned so much more than any two people should ever learn about shipping. We laughed and cried with our friends and sometimes alone. We experienced highs and lows and moments of genuinely wanting to back out and call the whole thing off.
We were fortunate enough to work with inspiring organizations and the most generous set of artists we could have ever hoped for. Watching David Tennant and Michael Sheen recite lines we wrote is a pinch me type of feeling that I’m not sure we’ll ever top. And above all else, we raised a figure for these charities that we could have only ever dreamed of, a figure we are immensely proud of. Thank you all for being part of this journey with us. Some of you have been here since the first sticker in 2019. Some of you continue to buy every last item. Some of you share your lives with us and are great friends to this community. Some of you cheer us on and wish us well every chance you get. Some of you give us your time, your talents, and your money and trust us to do good things with it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Your friends,
Lynn & Annie
A few final stats…
WIthin that £28,896 raised is an extra special number. So many of you gave a little extra to the charities when you made your donations, totaling £1,341 more than what you purchased!
The average donation amount across all 547 participants was £51.97!
We shipped nearly 3,000 pieces of merch to 50 countries (22 of which we had never shipped to before!)
Number of times one of us said we would never do this again: 43
Number of times we said we couldn’t wait for our next big idea: 44
4.5 months of hard work celebrated