The other day two colleagues happened to be looking at two different sites at the same time.
One was the homepage for Apple. And one was the homepage for the AFL-CIO.
Seeing them side by side made me think about toothpaste.
Every time I meet with a potential advocacy client who doesn't think that they need marketing help but really does, I usually start by asking about the toothpaste that each person in the room uses.
I ask them how much time they spend thinking about their toothpaste's branding. I ask them if they can remember the tube. I ask what about that product's positioning appealed to them.
Then I ask how much time and energy the people in the room have spent on those same things for their organization or on the new campaign they're considering.
The answers to those questions are actually pretty similar:
And there in lies the marketing problem they're facing:
The difference isn't hard to see. Just think about how much time the marketing teams at Colgate or Crest spend thinking about your toothpaste. Think about how many creative, smart, talented people are on those teams at each company, all committed to moving the needle in a positive direction in the toothpaste wars.
Colgate and Crest and thousands of other brands focus a dizzying amount of attention, time, energy and creative power on something that people inherently don't really pay attention to, all in an effort to make it natural to buy their product.
However, well-meaning organizations spend a fraction of time on these same questions focused on issues that people, generally speaking, SHOULD be receptive to, and then wonder why people don't buy their product.
Why? Because Non-profits and political campaigns are often are put into a trap because of their "goodness" of their message.
It doesn't really matter if your non-profit is doing good work or if your advocacy campaign has a strong point of view. That's not how corporate campaigns think, and it's not how non-profits should be thinking either.
What matters is:
These are all basic, fundamental planning details that corporate campaigns regularly put into thousands of products, services and campaigns that are launched every year.
These are also the details that most non-profits skip right over in favor of putting up a Facebook page, a button on the website, and a generic email blast pointing people to a contribution page.
This marketing gap is real and the lack of large advertising budgets actually makes it MORE critical that non-profits start following the same marketing approach that corporate campaigns do.
It's the holiday season, so maybe it's just wishful thinking, but in an increasing loud, increasingly crowded, increasingly over-communicated world, we need non-profits and advocacy campaigns to accept the fact that that everyone-- corporate, advocacy, political-- is playing by the same marketing rules.
I hope that 2011 will be the year that a few smart advocacy campaigns start to grab people's attention and push progressive issues and causes, instead of having to list to people shouting loudly and wearing silly outfits.
As we all think about our resolutions for next year and the things that we want to do differently, I hope that non-profits consider stopping acting like non-profits, and start embracing the evil, effective reality of corporate marketing.
Follow Matt Dunn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mwdunn
1. Nonprofits are usually very good at the program/mission, but lack skills/talent in marketing, design, seo, communications, etc.
2. Technology is costly for the majority of non-profits that want to run a fully branded campaign
To meet #1, there are volunteer sites such as Idealist, VolunteerMatch, and Catchafire that do a great job of supplementing nonprofits with skilled volunteers. If nonprofits have funding, they can hire consultants like Matt :)
To meet #2, there are few tech vendors that do a good job at integrating the visual design of a nonprofit into a campaign tool. My startup (CauseVox) isn't the best at it yet, but that is the direction we're heading.
The resulting ads didn’t sell soap; they sold an association between “disgusting” and “toilets.” They sold a new habit: frequent hand-washing.
As a result of her work, more than 20 countries now have national hand-washing programs and one of the participating companies has pledged to get a billion people washing their hands by 2015. Curtis wasn't afraid to use marketing techniques. In fact, she sought the advice of primo marketeers.
With so many people within reach via social media, it is imperative that nonprofits and social entrepreneurs know who they want to reach, with what message, and with what goal (donation, advocacy, etc.) This was underscored in the results of our survey of nonprofits this summer