queer ideas

The twelve tweets of February

The January round up seemed to go down very well, so the tradition continues with my twelve favourite things found on Twitter in February.

The same rules apply as before. Everything has something to do with fundraising and everything is credited to the tweeter who found it. If there's no credit, it's one of mine.

Eyes down...

'Mad Libs' style form increases conversion 25 to 40% via @rydesign

A great piece looking at how online sign-up can be improved with more personal and engaging forms.

Successful Fundraising – Not for the Thin Skinned via @PamelaGrow

A useful reminder about putting complaints into context and avoiding the knee-jerk reaction.

Email Newsletter Usability via @Delicious50

The executive summary of a Nielsen study into eNewsletter usability. Identifies an emotional connection that websites lack. Looks at subscribing, unsubscribing, Inbox issues and the importance of making scanning easy.

Keeping Control on One Wild Ride via @CharityTimes

The recession hasn't been that bad after all.

Donor Centred is Just Jargon via @KimberleyCanada

Thoughts from a range of fundraisers on what being donor centred actually means.

Study of High Value Donors (PDF)

Bank of America / Indiana University study into why high value donors give, why they stop and how they need to be treated in order to give more.

The Customers Always Write via @AlineReed

Two articles on SOFII (registration required) written by George Smith that look at what can happen when people who don't understand how to communicate get involved in writing copy.

Great selection of Fundraising Case Studies via @SeanPowell

Includes eMarketing, social networking and text benchmarking studies along with reviews of a number of issue specific campaigns.

Promoting the Joy of Giving: A Fundraising Revolution via @frdetective

Thoughts on creating a new model of fundraising.

The Irresistible Urge to Rebrand

Why do so many charities review their brands?

Research on Christmas DM Fundraising Activity

Statistical research looking at what lies behind the boost in Christmas giving (the number of people giving increases by 5% - average gift stays the same).

When nonprofits deny their mission via @JeffBrooks

Just because your charity undertakes work outside your core mission, you don't need to weaken your fundraising proposition.

It was a tough month to whittle things down to just twelve tweets. I probably could have done twenty quite easily. if you'd like to see some of the other ideas that almost made it, check out my twitterstream.

If you have seen (or posted) a great tweet this month, please add it as a comment.

And if you'd like to have a smile on your face for the next few minutes, check out this non-fundraising related tweet – healin'.

You can follow me on twitter by clicking @markyphillips.

How did giving to Haiti compare to previous emergencies?

CAF have recently updated their disaster monitor research which looks at long-term patterns of giving to emergency appeals. All figures are for the UK.

The key findings are:

• Just under half of people surveyed gave to Haiti (in comparison to 81% of people who gave to the 2004 tsunami appeal).
• Women were most generous (51% gave compared to just 44% of men).
• People aged 35-44 were most likely to give (in comparison with those aged 25-34 for the tsunami appeal).
• People in Northern Ireland were most likely to give (those in the North of England were least likely).

Where the research gets interesting is when it analyses what motivated donors and how they actually gave. There has been a fair amount of comment on the importance of social media such as Twitter and Facebook in generating funds and awareness of the disaster. But this research shows the continuing power of traditional media in driving donations – 75% of people interviewed said that reports on TV inspired their gift.

New media did have an impact. 5% of donors said they gave because of online communications, though email was seen to be surprisingly unimportant, standing at just 1%.

It backs up data from Hitwise, which saw the biggest increase in traffic to charity sites coming from news sites. Visits from Facebook and Twitter remained static.

Where new media has demonstrated its importance is in how people actually chose to give. Back in 2004, just 7% of people gave to the tsunami appeal via new media. In 2010, 17% of people surveyed chose this route to support the Haiti appeal.

Donating cash - through traditional collections – remains the most popular route to give. 40% of respondents gave in this way.

Though research shows that social media doesn't appear to be that important, I don't think we are necessarily asking the right questions in research. The impact of a stream of reminders and the power of social compliance can't be ignored.

I'm involved in some meetings next week looking at how we can measure the fundraising impact of group influence generated by online networks. I'll be sure to share what we uncover once the research is complete.

Until then, here's a short and entertaining video showing how powerful it's psychological impact can be (thanks to Social Hallucinations for finding the clip).

glumbert - Elevator Psychology

For details of what happened in the USA where 13% of donors gave via text, take a look at this post here.

You no longer control the message. And that's OK

This is a very short talk (3 minutes) from Alexis Ohanian (one of the people who set up Reddit) about a Greenpeace campaign aiming to stop humpback whales being hunted by Japanese fishermen.

To engage people, Greenpeace put a tracking device on a whale and gave people the opportunity to vote on a name.

The idea was picked up on Reddit and at that point Greenpeace's control went out the window as people power took over. The whale ended up being called Mr. Splashy Pants.

As you'll see, the campaign was a success. The Japanese didn't hunt the whales and everyone was happy.

But it was achieved by losing control.

Modern charities are, by their very nature, largely intangible and most guard their brands very carefully. One of the most frustrating things about my job is seeing fantastic ideas rejected with little thought because they are seen by one or two people in an organisation as being "off-brand".

But search online and you'll find on places like Twitter and Facebook that charities have very little control about what people say about them.

Fighting against this tide seems to be taking an approach like King Canute and we all know what happened to him.

Voices within a charity and from supporters are now more important in shaping a brand than the communications department. When people talk about their experiences of organisations they are brand building as much as the next TV campaign or scripted interview.

Many of the people who support charities find control a turn off. And research and testing shows that authenticity beats strict guidelines hands down when it comes to driving engagement.

Control is usually generated by fear. If you are worried that your supporters and staff might damage your brand by what they say, what does that imply about what is actually happening inside your organisation?

There is only one way to handle the world presented by web 2.0 and that's through concentrating on the experience that you give people. If that's good, your brand will be in very safe hands - even if it's not yours.

January Twitter round up

Apart from the posts on here, I also share loads of other useful and interesting things on Twitter. If you haven't yet signed up, perhaps because you think it's a load of rubbish, can I ask you to read this and think again.

To show you what you've missed, this is just a selection of some of the things I've posted or found on Twitter this month.

I've indicated which twitterer highlighted the information. If there's no credit, it's one of mine.

This is January's haul:

Haiti and the Pychology of Charity via @sldoolittle

The impact of leaving an opt-out flyer before making a door-to-door request for a donation.

Half-way Branding Does More Harm Than Good via @jeffbrooks

What your charity does is your brand. The design you choose is just a small part of the real package.

2007-08 UK Citizenship Survey: Volunteering and Charitible Giving Topic Report

UK government survey into volunteering and charitible giving. Looks at who gives and volunteers to which organisations and what they do, breaking down differences by gender, age, ethnicity, income and other variables.

Who Should I Give To? via @AlineReed

Thoughts on how choice in fundraising can effect response.

Imagination v Reality via @davetrott

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Charitable Giving for Overseas Development: UK Trends Over a Quarter of a Century

Detailed analysis into the changes that have impacted on giving to development charities over the last 25 years. Which charities have grown fastest, what events influenced giving, how does giving to overseas development compare to changes in support for other causes and more?

Preliminary Figures on 2009 Online Giving via @TinaFCC

Data from Network For Good, showing what's happened with online giving in 2009. Charities fared better than expected. Average donation amount down. Number of gifts up.

Dear Aunt Violet... via @AmandaSanter

Thoughts and advice on how to thank donors effectively.

How to Build Your Own iPhone App

A really cheap way to have your own iPhone app up and running in minutes.

Which Brands are Most Engaged in Social Media

What companies are doing on the web with social media.

Blackbaud Online Giving Report via @SMacLaughlin

Analysis of giving to 2,000 charities shows an increase in online giving of 46%.

Beyond Comprehension: We Know that Genocide and Famine are Greater Tradgedies than a Lost Dog. At Least We Think We Do via @jeffbrooks

Why we should focus on what a donor can do - not what they can't.

Feel free to add your own suggestions as a comment. The thing that always frustrates me about Twitter is what I might be missing when I'm not on!

You can follow me on Twitter by clicking @markyphillips.

Social networks don't seem to be driving extra traffic to help Haiti

Bill Tancer of Hitwise has reported on some fascinating data on his blog.

The earthquake in Haiti caused a huge jump in visits to US charity websites. They were up five fold from an average of 0.02% before the earthquake hit to over 0.1% on the 13th of January.

Whilst search engines continue to be the main driver of traffic, news websites registered the greatest increase, more than doubling the number of visits they drove – from 8% on the 12th to almost 17% on the 14th.

The top contributors were:

• Drudge Report 3.6%
• ABCnews.com 0.2%
• MSNBC 0.14%

Interestingly, considering the amount of coverage of the earthquake we've seen on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, traffic from these sources remained relatively static.

The power of a Twittering celebrity

There's a great post on Jonathan Waddingham's (from Just Giving) blog.

He noticed that Stephen Fry had RT'd (that means shared a link) to Mel Cupper's, Big Issue fundraising page on his Twitter account, saying...

"He just needs a tiny-winy bit more cash and he's there... http://www.justgiving.com/melcupper”

You are probably thinking that there's not much interesting about that. You'd be right. But Jonathan has looked at the impact of that tweet in terms of views and money. You can find out the whole story on Jonathan's blog, but in short this is what happened:

• On Sunday the 12th, the page was seen by two people
• On Monday, Stephen tweeted the site to his 651,945 followers (some of whom RT'd the tweet to their own followers)
• 13,979 subsequently visited Mel's page (that's 2.1%)
• They came from over 30 different countries
• They spent an average of 4 minutes and 18 seconds there
• The bounce rate (people who had a quick look and left) was 95%
• 39 people gave a donation (that's 0.006% of the original audience and 0.3% of those who came to the page)
• They gave a total of £470 (with an average donation of £12)

Another quick calculation shows that a good planning rate for estimating the income for an unconnected single tweet from a celebrity is (all thing being equal) about 72 pence /1000 followers.

For another example of twitter based, celebrity fundraising, check out this post.

For all the background detail and more analysis from Jonathan, click here.

What's wrong with Mashable's Summer of Social Good?

The desire to raise serious sums of money for charities (or non-profits as our American cousins might say) is a fantastic thing.

Animal rescue, tackling global poverty, protection of wildlife and the environment and funding cancer research and awareness are cracking causes that deserve every penny they get.

But after twenty years in fundraising, I'm sticking my neck out. Though I am going to sound a right miserable sod, I don't think – in its current form at least – Mashable's Summer of Social Good is going to raise much money. Not through normal everyday donors anyhow.

Here's why.

Mashable is an amazing resource that has proved its value over and over again by improving our understanding of social media. @Mashable on Twitter has (as I write) over 867,000 followers. Couple that with those who read the Mashable website and throw in a few dozen re-tweets and you have a serious body of people behind you.

But that's not all.

You can add GlobalGiving, the Social Media Club, Treehugger and even Facebook to the mix, as they are just a few of the partners involved in the summer long campaign.

The trouble is, the free transfer of information is not the same thing as the raising of funds. Though coming up with great ideas is hard work, we love to share them. It validates all those hours tapping away at the keyboard. Just ask any blogger. As soon as a post is up, you start checking your stats to see who is looking at it, where your referrals are coming from and how long people spend rummaging around the rest of your site.

Money is a different thing. Getting people to give it to charity is hard.

And, as a fundraiser, I know that simply putting four causes (no matter how great they are) in front of a donor isn't going to mean much money is going to change hands.

Take a look at some basic statistics from the traditional world of fundraising through direct marketing.

• The average highly personalised cold recruitment appeal sent to a targeted cold list presenting an emotional case for one particular organisation might generate a response of 1% or 2%. 

• The average press insert – again presenting an emotional case for support – placed in an appropriate publication will generate a response rate of about 0.001% or 0.002%

• A strong display press ad will have a much lower response - perhaps 0.0001%. And often less.

• Then you have a tweet of 140 characters. Hardly enough to include the organisation's name and what the Summer of Social Good is about.

• That 867,000 might be expected to generate a cash response of about 0.000001%. That's about 1 (or maybe 2 people) / tweet. I'm not talking about click throughs here as they will be higher - I just think the number of actual gifts, based on my experience of other media, might really be this low (if you know better, please get in touch - I'd love to be shown I'm wrong). 

• If @Mashable followers were asked ten times a day, that would generate up to 20 new gifts (at the higher end of my estimation). At $10 a go, that works out at $200 / day. Over the three months of the campaign, we might see $18,000 generated.

In the words of Kevin Keegan, I would love it if I was proved wrong. I love Twitter and I think @Mashable is a great resource and I want nothing but success for them both.

That's why, based on a fair amount of time at the coal face of raising funds, I would make the following recommendations to @Mashable about how they might improve the Summer of Social Good.

At the crux of the issue is the fact that people are most likely to give to charity when they feel involved and engaged. Normal tweets won't reach the emotional buttons that cause people to give.  If fundraising was as simple as asking for money, I'd be doing a very different job (ideally something to do with shark research).

If Twitter is going to raise serious amounts of money (outside of emergencies) we need to recognise that a different type of relationship is required. So to pay back Mashable for the huge amount of great ideas they have shared with us, here are the top ten tips of a humble fundraiser on how to make the Summer of Social Good more effective.

1. Make the ask personally

A direct message (DM) is better than a normal tweet. If that message is from @Mashable it's certainly going to be read, particularly if they address the reader by name. Rather than just ask someone to give, ask the people that you DM to let you know if they are going to give or not. It's harder work than putting out a general tweet, but as I've said, fundraising isn't easy.

2. Show people you value them

The most basic sign of recognition on Twitter is to follow people. It shows you are interested in them and what they have to say. I still don't fully understand why some very large charities follow so few of their followers back – this isn't about broadcasting, it's about connection. Obviously you want to avoid the pirates and the Britney vids, but following is the start of a relationship. It's a huge number to manage, but effort equals reward.

You could, of course, set up a second account - one for the day job and one for charity work (see point 5 on how to make it look different).

3. Justify the ask

A broad "please give $20" (or even $10 or $5) is never as effective as giving donors something tangible to do. I've posted before on the benefits of earmarking a recruitment gift. Organisations such as Nothing But Nets and Charity:Water (the latter helped Twestival raise $250,000) have grown very quickly through making the most of our desire to do something "real" to help people in need. So rather than just asking for money, ask people to give to do something like planting a tree or provide a meal for a real person.

Tweetsgiving, for example, raised over $11,000 in 48 hours through taking a focus on building a single school in Tanzania by asking for $10 a brick (and getting support from over 100 press and blog sources).

4. If you can't justify the ask - make it personal and relevant

The charities that will benefit from the Summer of Social Good are in the big league – The Humane Society of the US, Oxfam America, WWF and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They will be looking for unrestricted funds that they can spend on broad areas of work. This is not a great way to motivate people so I'd suggest looking at other ways to make the ask engaging. 

One idea might be to place the focus on the donor and ask people to donate 1 cent for every follower they have as a sort of Twitter Tithe. It might be expensive for those with tens of thousands of followers, but would get people thinking. If you add a Twitter Tithe calculator you'll get people starting to interact as well.

It may even be something that might be attractive to the big twitter players who want to show they are doing their bit, which brings us to...

5. Give people a badge

The sticker on the lapel has worked as a means to thank and build social momentum for generations. In the UK , the poppy is seen everywhere in November and red noses sell in their millions raising money for Comic Relief. These symbols are so powerful that people feel left out if they aren't wearing them.

I've been impressed by the number of people going green with their Twitter icons in support of democracy in Iran. By giving people an opportunity to add a badge to their picture another reason for giving is created and the social momentum starts to build. A frame, flash or picture effect offered to people who give, could really help. These guys have the right idea.

Then give people a different badge

The credit card companies know that people like to be able demonstrate how rich or caring you are by what sort of card you use. Let people upgrade their badges when they give more money or recruit more people.

6. Test your message

Anyone involved in fundraising knows that testing and re-testing messages is the key to success. Many people think that charities don't really know that much about metrics. They couldn't be more wrong. Real success comes from knowing your data inside out. The current range of sample tweets available could be better.

People might want to brag about how good they are, but it must be subtle. These sample tweets are just too direct to be attractive to the donors I know.

By testing and analysing response, we'll learn what works.

7. Let people help in the way that works for them

Ask people to choose different responsibilities - giving money, getting the message out, recruiting others to give, blogging. Social networks have been used to raise money for centuries and anyone who has ever managed an appeal committee knows that you get people to do what they are best at AND what they actually want to do in order to reach your goal. A registration that allows someone to define themselves with a role (with a set of responsibilities) is much more powerful than just asking for a re-tweet or a small donation. Which links neatly to...

8. Focus the landing page on the donor

There must be about twenty logos on the current landing page. It's about everyone else other than the donor. Click through to the charities and it's just about them and their work. In the bottom left hand corner of the landing page there are some of the latest tweets - but that's about it. Donors want to see and hear about what they can do (going back to points 3, 4 and 7). It is a subtle difference that makes the difference between success and failure.

It may be that some form of reporting back is part of the next stage of the plan. If it is, why not tell potential supporters about it. Which brings us to...

9. Show someone the impact they have made

Show supporters how their money has made a difference. The team at Charity:Water are excellent at this. Another charity that has a very donor focussed approach is MSF.

10. Show people you know them

Once someone has engaged with the Summer of Social Good, recognise the fact in every communication. Don't drop back into the easy but largely ineffective (for fundraising) mass tweeting. Twitter, like blogs, represents a means to start the realtionship. From then on it's back to fundraising basics.

And finally

I'm relatively new to Twitter and blogging and maybe I don't know as much as some of the experts. I might have a rather red face come the end of August, but I think far too many charities have forgotten the basics of fundraising when it comes to new media. 

The majority of charity blogs, websites and twitter streams are about pumping out what the charity wants to say. It's when an organisation stops and asks the donor what they actually want to hear, that amazing things can happen. Twitter is a fantastic tool that allows us to listen (if we can be bothered to follow back our followers). I would suggest to charities that is where the secret of its power lies.

If you think I am misguided, mad or simply ignorant, please let me in on what you know.

Finally, if I've suggested things which are already in place, please accept my apologies. 

My seven stages of Twitter

You must have heard about Twitter. If you are already a user, you'll probably be able to relate to much of my experience. If you haven't yet joined, hopefully this will help you find out what lies in store for you.

First a few notes for the real beginner.

• A tweet is a micro-blog. You have 140 characters to share a thought. People use URL shorteners so that they can post links. 
• A follower is someone who reads a twitterer's tweets. When you follow someone, their tweets are automatically delivered to you as they are posted. 
• The @ symbol before a name is simply there to define the name of a Twitter user. I'm @markyphillips for example.
• The # (hashtag - it's alt 3 on a mac) defines discussion topics to enable simple searches. #followfriday for example is the hashtag given to the day each week when recommendations on people to follow are shared (you will have to sign up to see what is happening on followfriday).

Now, back to my seven stages...

Dismissal

I first heard about Twitter a couple of years ago. I'm not sure who told me about it first. It was either @rydesign or @breathingsince.

At that point it looked to me like some sort of mass texting service that you could use to let your friends know about the state of your hangover, what you'd had for lunch and what particular song was playing on your itunes.

I thought it seemed like a load of rubbish.

Signing up

After hearing and reading a few news stories, I finally signed up in February. I made some inane comments along the lines of those described above. My opinion hadn't really shifted much.

Fiddling

I started following a few people and organisations outside my network of friends and got a few follows back. Being a newbie, I didn't quite understand the rules. I did a small number of business type tweets that referenced queerideas.co.uk and Bluefrog along with other sites and news that I thought might be of interest to charity fundraisers. 

Interest

@AlineReed let me in on @serafinowicz's use of Twitter and Just Giving to raise £5,000 for Comic Relief.  I blogged on this back in the middle of March. The fact that someone was using it for fundraising suddenly lifted Twitter out of the realms of a disjointed stream of consciousness into something that charities could use to engage donors and raise funds.

Oooooh I thought (in a rather Frank Spencer way).

Engagement

I started following 'hard core', looking for all Twitter streams that interested me. From social networking specialists, through to charities, fundraising, advertising, Arsenal, news, celebrities and politicians. I gained new insight into charity fundraising, uncovered fantastic pieces of psychological and social research, discovered great new organisations like herorat.org from @AmandaSanter and started to interact with CEOs of charities like @Kjer from FORGE. 

I started being braver about my own tweets too. I saw that personal comments helped to turn organisations into people who I grew to like. Rather than just keeping it to newsy items, I started to joke and returned to a few of the tweets that I'd dismissed weeks earlier. I even started to swap restaurant reviews with @causeperfect and we have been talking about setting up a 140 character restaurant review twitterstream called #wowchows (credit to Jackie for the name).

I also moved from using the twitter website to TweetDeck for my computer and Tweetie for my phone. These make it easier to communicate with large numbers of twitterers.

Conversion

Recently my brain has started changing. I am now thinking in 140 character chunks and I'm much more economical when explaining issues. 

What has been the biggest surprise is that it has changed how I give to charity. If I like the people who are tweeting, I'm much more likely to give to them. As a result I'm now a donor to the Lake Simicoe Conservation Foundation in Canada through @KimberleyCanada, Borneo Orangutang Survival Inernational through @DerekHumphries, Charity:Water through @scottharrison and as I've mentioned already, to FORGE through @kjer. I've even got around to re-starting a direct debit to Amnesty International UK because of the tweets from @SusanneUre from Amnesty in Canada.

Smaller charities in the UK have also caught my attention. Organisations like @HearingDogs and @bullyinguk are in the big league on Twitter being regularly recommended on #followfriday. The biggies such as @theNSPCC and @christian_aid are still comparatively quiet and follow very few people.

Twitter is another enormous step in the globalisation of charities. It is changing the ground rules on a weekly basis. Just because I live in the UK, for example, doesn't mean I have to support a charity based here. The feedback I get from my Twitter friends is what is important to me. 

I can see that more of my donations will be given through the way I interact with them on Twitter. Next on my list is going to be the sponsorship of a Lion Guardian through Wildlife Direct - brought to my attention directly by the CEO – @paulakahumbu.

Evangelist

Of all the social networking vehicles I've engaged with, Twitter has been the most enriching and rewarding – in all senses. Yes, there is a fair amount of chaff amongst the grains of wheat, but each snippet of news that I read, each thought that I'm exposed to and each link that I click returns so much that it is worth it.

I really can't see the day when I'll stop blogging and I don't see Twitter damaging blogs at all. At the end of the day much of the joy of Twitter is through being referred to larger thought pieces, more detailed stories and research findings and I'd like to continue adding to the knowledge and understanding that Twitter is helping tens of thousands of people to unlock.

Why don't you join us? New friends, understanding and knowledge comes free with every sign up.

You start here.

I've given my first donation via Twitter

I've posted about FORGE in the past (A US based charity that works with displaced communities in Africa). They tried to implement the Kiva model (without the lending part) and it didn't work too well.

As a result, Executive Director, Kjerstin Erickson, went public about the organisation's situation. 

The story was picked up by Sean Stannard-Stockton at Tactical Philanthropy and a pretty intense debate started. Management consultants, PR people and the general fundraising community all started chipping in and helping out.

The result was that their funding gap was filled and the organisation found itself on a much firmer footing. They still have some way to go, but a visit to their site shows a growing number of projects that are full or partially funded. They are tiny compared to Kiva, but have funded 26 projects this year and raised over $40,000.

That said, they are still an organisation that suffers from a mild case of self-important syndrome. 

Their home page focuses on what the organisation does, rather than what the donor can do. What is Forge? and What's the problem? all take precedence over how a donor can make a difference. The language they use can be described as academic at best (and, at some times, impenetrable). Take their description of refugees for example – "dynamic social and economic actors who have the potential and desire to control their own lives, livelihoods and futures".

And their emails are even worse, addressing the reader as a "valued subscriber" and promising "periodic emails specific to your interests".

Transparency is central to the FORGE model, but inaccessible language can act as a barrier as much as a locked filing cabinet.

Ok, gripe over. They do great work and the language can't be that important to me because I've just made my second donation. It wasn't much, just $2, but It's the way I gave it that is important – through Twitter.

Or to be precise, through tipjoy, a widget that allows you to donate direct from your paypal account. It's fast – one click – and seems to work very well. Tipjoy is not just for charities, commercial payments can be made using it as well. More details on exactly how it works can be found on the tipjoy site

I bet you're busrting to test it now to see how it might work for your charity. So sign up and why not give a gift to FORGE whilst your at it.

Note: If you want to follow me on twitter, you can do it here.

How to use Twitter to raise money

Everyone is ranting about the massive amount raised by Comic Relief. But behind the huge numbers is a great little idea by Peter Serafinowicz, who managed to raise over £5,000 on Red Nose Day with a combination of Twitter and Just Giving.

His idea was Twitter based vegetable pop star pun war.

All entries had to be tweeted and copied on to Peter's Just Giving fundraising page with a £2 donation per entry. It was that simple.

A couple of the better entries included:

• Pak Choi Division
• Glen Campbellpepper
• Artichoke Garfunkel
• The Pea Gees
• Elvis Parsley 

I'm sure you get the drift. 

The game kicked off at lunchtime and continued until the winner was announced at about five the next morning – it was The Notorious V.E.G.