Welcome to my personal blog on Robin Hood Marketing—the concept of stealing corporate savvy to sell just causes—and my life as a marketer, from Washington DC to Madagascar to points in between.
Katrina’s wake: happy facts and fundraising lessons
Posted by katya on Wed, August 27, 2008
On NPR this morning, I heard an unusual story about New Orleans - it chronicled the way people’s lives and life outlooks are improving there on this anniversary of Katrina. The relatively rare reporting of good news was probably great news to people in New Orleans:
After hearing so many of the positive changes and innovative projects post-Katrina, we’ve decided enough is enough. It’s time to put an end to the negative press in mainstream media. We know that the levees broke. We know that our city is dysfunctional. We know that. But do you know about Prospect.1? Or about the influx of young professionals into New Orleans? The world needs to know about the NEW New Orleans. And to quote Brad Pitt, “If you’re going to rebuild something, why not rebuild it right?” Amen brother.
This is the sentiment behind New Orleans 100, an effort to highlight the most innovative and world-changing ideas to take root in the city since Katrina. All Day Buffet, which is leading the effort, is working via social media to spread the word about these ideas and to “combat top-down media during the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.”
Here’s what I like about this effort:
-It’s a list (and lists are always good, sticky ideas)
-It’s collaborative and celebrates many organizations
-It’s specific and tangible
-They did a nice pitch to me as a blogger
While we’re on the topic of Katrina, if you’ve never read it, check out the White Paper we did here at Network for Good on disaster giving. It shows how it fast - and fleetingly - people give in response to a crisis.
Disclaimer: These results are not typical. This story is the fundraising equivalent of the bikini-clad woman in the Slimfast ad - a special success story.
That said, uber-networked bloggerista and social networking guru Beth Kanter did it. And in the process, she showed us how we might do it, too. Read the story here.
Okay, so you may not have hundreds of Twittering friends at the ready or even know what the heck is a Gnomedexer, but there are some lessons here.
The messenger is everything. If you want to raise money, get people who like you to ask their friends and family for funds on your behalf. When Beth reached out to her community - in person and online - people responded.
Well-networked messengers are gold. When those fans of yours have extensive online networks, they can touch an amazing number of people.
The simpler and easier the ask, the bigger the conversion. Asking people to make a $10 with a few clicks is not a big request, and so it’s hard to say no to it.
People are total conformists. Once people see their peers doing something, they’ll follow. Beth got a bunch of technically inclined people to reach out to their networks in public, and that’s peer pressure on steroids. Social norms, meet social networks.
Tangibility is key. Beth didn’t raise money for “girl’s education in Cambodia.” She asked people to help a specific young woman with her college education. That makes a big difference.
Transparency is essential. A ticker with real-time results measured against a tangible goal makes people feel trusting - and compelled toa ct.
Thank-yous are appreciated. Beth is great at thanking people, recognizing them and celebrating what their donations accomplished. That kind of gratitude is the happy ending to a fabulous fundraising campaign.
Thanks Beth for the inspiration. And for all you do for Cambodia, a place very close to my heart.
As promised in yesterday’s post, Bryan at Collective Lens has been kind enough to provide these tips, as well as these stunning photos, generously shared by the talented Shehzad Noorani and Kathy Adams.
Sathi’s (8 years old) face is blacked with carbon dust from recycled batteries. Often she looks so black, that children in her neighborhood call her ghost. She works in battery recycling factory at Korar Ghat on the outskirts of Dhaka. She earns less than Taka 200 ($3.50 approx) per month.
Kathy Adams, Empowerment International
Look Mom, I CAN count! Empowerment International works with not just students in Nicaragua but also their parents. Getting the parents involved and supportive of their child’s education is one key to success in completing at least primary school (in a nation where only 50% of the enrolled 1st graders complete 5th grade).
- Use photos to tell a story. “A picture is worth 1000 words,” as they say. Imagery can go much further than written text to bring out the events and emotions of a particular cause or issue. One photo can describe a pressing situation, warm the heart of the viewer, or cause your audience to react and respond. Furthermore, with multiple photos organized into a photo essay, an entire story can be told from the big picture to the smallest details in an efficient and effective manner.
- Use photos to grab the attention of the viewer. In today’s media-driven society, words alone can not compete for the attention of your desired audience. With television, movies, YouTube, texting, and millions of competing websites, your message must make an instantaneous impact. This is especially true if you are vying for the attention of today’s youth. If your message is text only, you should not expect most people to read more than five sentences. Lead with a powerful photo.
- Use photos to create an emotional impact. Human faces attract the viewer’s eye faster than any other subject matter. Use this to your advantage, and display photos that showcase the human impact of an important issue and the work that your organization is doing around it.
- Copyright issues are extremely important. If you see a photo on the web, you are most likely not allowed to use it. The photographer has full copyrights to the photo unless otherwise noted. However, it doesn’t hurt to ask for permission! Many photographers would be delighted to hear from you, especially if you’re using the photo for a good cause. Keep in mind that the production of good photography costs money and is a career for many people. Also, many websites such as Collective Lens and Flickr allow photographers to mark their photos with Creative Commons licenses, and then allow the public to search for photos marked with these licenses. These licenses allow others to freely use the photos, but only under certain conditions, and always with attribution. For example, a photo marked with a Creative Commons Non Commercial license (CC-BY-NC) can not be used for commercial or advertising purposes. However, it is permissible to use it in an editorial story. It is also important to note that the people in the photos have rights as well. If a photo is to be used for commercial purposes, then every identifiable person in the photo must sign a release. If a photographer does not have releases, then he or she should have marked the photo with a Creative Commons Non Commercial license. Sometimes copyright rules can get complicated, but don’t let that deter you from asking questions if you have doubts about a photo. If all else fails, email the photographer and ask for permission.
Answer: a great photo. One that moves you to a smile, a tear or a click to donate.
I look at dozens of nonprofit websites a week, and almost none of these have a dynamite photo. They may have no photo. Or a photo, but it’s small. Or corporate, stock-photo-looking image. Or a dull photo.
This should be the hottest priority for your home page. People glance at web pages, not peruse them. You want to pull them in fast, and there’s no better way to do that than with a compelling image.
Do you work with kids? Feature photos of them - or taken by them - on the home page. Or put a piece of their artwork on the home page. Do you work with animals? Put a big image of Rover on your page. Do you do something abstract, like advocacy for public lands? Show one of your super advocates standing in front of something they saved. Do you work on domestic abuse? Put a big photo of one of your hotline staff on the home page. HUMANIZE what you do. Bring it to life. Put it in pictures. Make that image a big piece of your home page real estate.
But Katya, you might say, what about YOUR home page? Errrrr, right. Paging Dr. Hypocrisy. BUT, we’re about to do this right at Network for Good’s nonprofit site - This is “before.” Stay tuned for the transformation. Goodbye field, hello humans.
Some great inspiration is at Collective Lens. I’ve invited them to share tips for great photos, and they kindly agreed, so stay tuned for those in an upcoming post.
Thanks for the thoughtful and sympathetic responses to my last post. And Beth much appreciation for the great tips.
I truly believe that email is valuable, but it can take over your day. So can meetings, phone calls and other task-oriented events. And in the buzz of busyness in these tasks, it’s easy to lose the vision you need to know what you should do first and why.
Here’s how I’m trying to cope:
1. I made a list of seven questions that speak to the seven most important strategic goals I have at work. They are questions about big aims. For example, on of them is, “Does it improve customer service?” I hung the list right over my desk.
2. Whenever I have a pause in my day or an inner debate about what to do next, I put any task that takes over two minutes against the list. If the answer to all seven questions is NO, then the task gets tabled. There’s no question, how you spend your time determines your success or failure with just about anything. Saying no to things that aren’t important frees up the time to focus on what is.
3. When things are important, I try to build a system around them that ensures they stay important. Our marketing team went on retreat at the beginning of the summer, and we spent a whole day on practical ways we could improve the experience of Network for Good prospects and customers - the people who use us to raise money. We spent hours going through everything we do from their perspective, and we uncovered all kinds of ways we could be more helpful to them. We turned that into a to-do list that we meet on bi-weekly. How many strategy retreats end up as a summary in a binder somewhere? We feared that, so we assigned owners and deadlines for every idea. Of course, no one is perfect. Our most recent meeting has been delayed twice because of urgent things that arose in the office - but at least those were things that spoke to the seven priorities hanging above my desk.
I still fail all the time at this and every other good intention, but I’m trying to stick to the plan. I’m also trying to make sure I structure the unstructured time I need to think creatively. Sometimes doing nothing is the best possible way to come up with great ideas.
When I got back from vacation on Monday, I had more than 1,000 emails.
After two days, I finished answering all of them. It was a hollow sense of accomplishment - sort of like eating the whole box of Thin Mints.
This have been the worst two days EVER in terms of my mood and creativity.
Then I read what Seth Godin said on this topic. Read his whole post - in fact, read his blog every day - but here are my favorite lines:
Do you spend your day responding and reacting to incoming all day… until the list is empty? ... and then you’re done.
...Years ago, I got my mail (the old fashioned kind) once a day. It took twenty minutes to process and I was forced to spend the rest of the day initiating, reaching out, inventing and designing. Today, it’s easy to spend the whole day hitting ‘reply’.
Carving out time to initiate is more important than ever.
According to a new study from AOL, 59% of people check their email in the bathroom. The study of 4,000 users also showed people check their email from the following locations:
• In bed in their pajamas: 67%
• From the bathroom: 59%
• While driving: 50%
• In a bar or club: 39%
• In a business meeting: 38%
• During happy hour: 34%
• While on a date: 25%
• From church: 15% (up from 12% last year)
This is warped. What’s worse - I think I have done most of these.
No wonder I’m in a bad mood - I’m in reactive hell. Read email - send email - react - react - and, as Seth says, forget how to initiate.
What’s the solution? Beth has some suggestions. They’re good.
Here’s what I’m going to do: Get out of the email weeds and look at the rest of the world. Tomorrow, I’m hanging over my desk the top 10 things I need to get done to advance Network for Good’s mission. I’m going to spend more time checking that list than my inbox. I’ll let you know what happens.
I’d hang it up now but I need to check the 10 emails I received while writing this post.
One of the most common questions I get asked about online marketing is, “How do I build an email list?”
I took a stab at answering this question with two smart cookies (I mean savvy marketing professionals), Jocelyn Harmon and Alia McKee. (We took a whole range of additional questions from nonprofits as part of a Network for Good Ask the Expert call - you can check out the whole thing here!) Here is the list we devised:
1. Make sure that all your media mentions are driving people to your website (make it a call to action)!
2. Create a strong email-address-collection device on that website. (NOT something lame like “sign up for news” but rather give them something enticing. Give them an incentive or a reason to join. Give them a discount on an event. Give them an article you’ve written or tips for better living and then get their email address in return for your sending that gem to them.
3. Optimize search: A lot of nonprofits are not taking advantage of Google grants—more on that here.
4. Collect emails from donors via direct mail - maybe they’d rather hear from you electronically.
5. Use your email signature - it is a great tool for doing marketing, whether it’s promoting an event or asking people to sign up to hear from you on your website.
6. Ask people to sign a petition - with their email address and with permission to contact them.
7. Collect email addresses at events. I have been to 10 nonprofit events in the last 18 months, and I can’t think of a single one that collected my email address. Lost opportunity!
I’m back from vacation! It was excellent to take a breather.
Hot off the presses, here is my latest Fundraising Success column. It’s inspired by a car I once blogged about here. By the way, no offense if you have a hippy car. In fact, if you DO have one, send me a photo via email and I’ll send you a copy of Robin Hood Marketing:)
Some time ago while driving in my home base of Washington DC, I stopped at a red light next to a Honda Civic of a certain age. An old age. The hatchback and bumper were covered top to bottom with bumper stickers. You know the kind of car I’m talking about. There’s one in every traffic jam – especially if you live in a college town. It’s a compact car chockablock with a bewildering array of declarations of belief. Maybe you even drive one (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
It’s fine to drive such a vehicle, really, but it’s not okay to operate like that in the office. You see, that car got me thinking. I can’t get the image of the thing out of my mind. I think the reason is, that car is a rusting symbol on wheels of so many of the mistakes we make in our sector.
Too many nonprofits are the equivalent of what I call the hippy car. Here’s what I mean.
1. We’ve got a bumper sticker marketing strategy.
As nonprofits, we tend to declare what we believe and think that’s persuasive. It’s marketing by mission statement, and it’s annoying to others.
Slapping a bumper sticker on a car is a way of declaring your views that is one-way. You speak out and everyone else is left to listen (and smell your exhaust). That’s your prerogative as a vehicle owner, but it should not be your style as a marketer.
If you are a very loud preacher for your cause who rarely breaks to listen to your audience - or take in their perspective - you could end up with an audience of one. Yourself. We should be passionate, but be in a conversation with potential supporters. Good marketing is not a stickerfest, nor is it a monologue. It’s a give and take.
Don’t have a bumper sticker marketing strategy – go for more of a carpool experience. We should all be on this ride together.
2. We’re getting ourselves written off as hippy dippy or irrelevant.
Tthere’s something about the whole package of that car that lacks credibility for most the drivers idling alongside it. If we’re passionate about a cause, we may wear it on our sleeve, or on our bumper, with great pride. Such zeal can be good and bad. Good, in that passion can be wonderfully persuasive. Bad, in that too much passion (especially the angry, slightly raving kind) can start to sound coo-coo.
If we push our agenda into people’s faces with this level of subtlety, we’re going to get dismissed as “out there.” I get a certain feeling when I see cars like this: “Wow, that looks like a nice, well-intentioned person, but hope I don’t run into them at a cocktail party because they’d never stop talking.”
I guarantee that the Ford SUV with the Support our Troops ribbon and the unmarked Accords and Camrys around the hippy car were not converted to a single cause on the car because the message delivery and messenger have that icky polemic feel. Don’t have a tone that says finger-wag.
3. We’ve got too many stickers.
The driver of the car I saw was apparently one busy dude, because he supports about ten causes, five indie bands and a score of other unidentifiable organizations, secret societies or issues I’m not hip enough to recognize.
He also somehow found time to brake for squirrels and leprechauns.
Wow. I wish I had those time management skills.
But seriously, this is a great example of way too many messages. Remember, people can usually only handle about one message at a time. And you’ll be lucky if you can consistently get your supporters to attribute one idea or concept to your organization.
The more messages you heap on to your message delivery vehicles (pun intended), the more you seem like a raving, wide-ranging, unfocused mess. People will react to your communications the way they would if you’d stuck bumper stickers all over your body – they’d run the other way. Or cross to the other side of the street.
In other words, no one is going to stick around (ha) long enough to figure out what on earth you stand for if you declare yourself like this.
Heroes/role models: “Great journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid, and determined change-makers like Michelle Rhee (chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system).”
Favorite quote: “[Nike’s] ‘Just Do It.’ It’s one of the best-ever marketing slogans and a good life philosophy. I feel that life is too short for complaining, making excuses or dillydallying when there are important ways to make a difference right now.”
Best advice you’ve ever received: “Listen. Try to listen attentively to everyone. It makes all the difference in life, relationships and even marketing.”
How do you see social networking working for nonprofit organizations and their fundraising efforts: “Social networking is simply the phenomenon of people online connecting to others. So think of your social-media strategy not as a tool set, but rather a conduit to living beings who want to engage. If you are in a position to do that as an organization, then it is worth your time to experiment. If you’re not doing that now in your conventional outreach, then think twice. You need a genuine urge and ability to start a conversation with supporters in order to succeed.”
Best advice you can give fundraisers: “Think of the donor’s interests above your needs. It transforms your relationship with your supporters.”
Here’s the last of my thoughts, pulled from my book, on benefit exchanges. Don’t forget: you can’t ask for action without them!
If we make promises about our nonprofit, especially bold ones, we need to support them. We don’t need to quantify every reward or produce scientific evidence for every point we propose. We simply need to show that our benefit exchange is credible. In other words, we need to ensure that the action we ask for is feasible and the reward we offer is possible.
Facts and figures are one approach to sounding reliable, but the problem is that they are quickly forgotten. Also, a lot of people don’t trust them. We need to make statistics as personal as possible so they will be remembered and believed. The average person won’t recall how many pounds of nitrates run off into a river or the concentration of E. coli in parts per million in an aquifer, but they will remember the poop in the tap water.
A slew of psychological studies have shown that vivid personal stories are incredibly convincing, far more so than quantifiable statistics. I make many decisions about the products I buy, the books I read, and the places I go based on recommendations from people I respect. I think the person who offers the testimonial or stars in the success story we use is as important as the story itself. The right messengers lend great credibility to our claims. We should choose messengers who are known or respected by our audience or their immediate peers. We can also add credibility to our message by convincing our audience it can take action without too much effort and fuss. If an action seems like a big undertaking, that perception will undermine the idea that rewards are attainable. For this reason a lot of private-sector advertising has the word easy in it. It’s also why people love remote controls and drive-through windows. We don’t want to have to work too hard to get what we want.
Another approach is showing our audience members that many people like them are taking the action. Social psychologists and marketing experts talk about the power of “social norms” or “social proof.” Social proof is the powerful idea that if we believe everyone is acting in a certain way, we’re likely to act that way too. We’re conformists by nature, and we take our cues about how to think and what to do from those around us.
We can’t easily change what our audiences believe, but by plugging into their existing mind-set we unleash great power behind our benefit exchangen—and our message.
The values of our audience may have nothing to do with our cause, but we can still use them. Consider the messages we see every day and the values they represent. Ads for women’s running shoes are all about strength and empowerment. They practically scream, “I am woman!” Pharmaceutical ads during the nightly news show how certain drugs help seniors attain what they want: a happy and independent life. During a televised basketball game, an ad for men’s deodorant shows a woman ripping a man’s clothes off in an elevator. No need for interpretation there. Each of these ads reflects a value the target users of the products care about, think about, and deeply desire. And each is fairly far removed from the product in question. Is self-actualization related to running shoes? Does arthritis medication buy happiness? Are deodorants the first thing that comes to mind when you think about sexual desire? Probably not, but the associations work because the values in question are close to each audience’s heart.
A famous, frequently cited example of the value-based principle at work in social advertising is the successful Don’t Mess with Texas campaign. The phrase has become so famous that many people outside Texas don’t even realize that this is not a state slogan but rather a long-running marketing effort to get people to stop littering. The young Texan men who were the target of the campaign didn’t care about littering, but they did care about their macho image, and no one doubted the fierce pride they had for their home state. By tapping into these powerful feelings with the Don’t Mess with Texas concept, which didn’t have a thing to do with trash, the ad agency that created the campaign (GSD&M) drastically reduced roadside litter.
Remember: Make your message about what your audience’s values, not your own, if you want people to listen.
Continuing with Benefit Exchange week, keep in mind, you need to make yours personal.
Our audience members need to believe from our message that the reward we’re offering for taking action will make life better for them as individuals. The private sector understands the importance of making rewards personal. They don’t sell you a car by explaining the way the engine is built; they tell you the car is reliable, safe, or fast, depending on who you are and your personal priorities. They take the attributes of their product and translate them into personally desirable benefits.
That translation is easy to make for most products. It’s harder for good causes.
While I was living in Ukraine, the government tax authority launched a campaign to motivate taxpayers to stay honest and continue paying their taxes. The tax authority developed several ads. One was a cartoon illustration of a bee in front of a hive with a slogan celebrating the fruits of a collective contribution to the government. Another was a photograph of a new well and water pump; city residents could fill containers with fresh water from the well. An accompanying slogan thanked taxpayers for making the well and other city improvements possible. In one of my trainings, I placed the ads side by side and asked a roomful of Ukrainians which was more effective given the tax authority’s marketing goals. Not surprisingly, they were unanimous in their judgment that access to fresh water was far more personally relevant, and therefore motivating, than a role in building a metaphorical hive.
This example seems obvious, yet in our communication we often focus more on hives than on wells. We talk about saving the earth, ending poverty, or creating a great society. Every day, we have to remind ourselves that the hive is what we’re building; the well is what our audience needs to see.
At the end of the day, the personal connection, not the grand concept, grabs our attention.
Times are tough. How do you get people’s attention right now? How do you get them to act?
The answer, of course, is the benefit exchange. That’s marketing jargon for what you need to offer to get someone to act. It is how you get someone to want to pay the price for what you’re selling, whether you’re selling membership, the act of making a donation, or a change in a behavior. It provides a reward in exchange for action. It answers the question, “What’s in it for me?”
This week, I’m going to post on how to craft a great benefit exchange, pulling some content from my chapter on the topic in Robin Hood Marketing. Why? Because I’m seeing too few compelling benefit exchanges in nonprofit marketing these days.
The first attribute of a great benefit exchange is IMMEDIACY. What will people get right away in exchange for doing what you ask, whether you want them to give money, volunteer or quit smoking?
Here’s what I’m talking about:
When I was a journalist in Cambodia in the mid-1990s, I interviewed young people for a story on HIV and AIDS. Teen boys and young men in the Southeast Asian country rarely used condoms despite one of the fastest growing epidemics of HIV and AIDS in the region. When I asked them why, young men told me they knew which girlfriends or prostitutes had HIV by the temperature of their skin. The prostitutes I met in shed-like brothels said they felt powerless to insist on condoms, and anyway, many believed douching with toothpaste would kill HIV. These misconceptions were clearly a challenge for organizations battling HIV and AIDS, but the real problem became clear when I spoke to a teen boy in Phnom Penh. He was wearing a red checked sarong and sucking on a hand-rolled cigarette when I approached him, and he regarded me with withering skepticism when I asked him about AIDS. “Why would I care about something that might kill me in ten years?” he asked. “I will die from something else before then.” In a country plagued by landmines, poor water, infectious disease and (at the time) a guerrilla army, he may have been right. A cultural and religious sense of fatalism only reinforced the view. Where was the sense of immediacy?
Across town, in a pagoda surrounded by banana trees, people sick with AIDS had a different sense of immediacy. A monk clad in saffron robes was mixing a medicinal drink made of bark chips and served in old Sprite bottles. The monk said the elixir cured AIDS, and ill people from throughout the country traveled to Phnom Penh for the drink and his blessing. I spent an afternoon watching him receive visitors on a straw mat in the temple, and some of them spoke with me. In our conversations, it became clear what they wanted. They were there because they needed hope, and the monk had that reward ready for them in a green plastic bottle.
Since a sense of immediacy is essential to a good reward, we have to create it if we don’t have it. It doesn’t work to tell a fatalistic young man in Cambodia that using a condom will prevent a disease far down the road. The nonprofit PSI brought a sense of immediacy to condom use in Cambodia by putting a desirable brand – the alluringly English-named Number One Condom - in the hands of people right at one moment they might use the product - in a brothel. The audience wasn’t told to think of a deadly disease while seeking physical gratification (which surely would have led them to dismiss thoughts of the disease), but rather asked to do use an appealing product that provided an instant boost to the ego.
Some good causes deal with the immediacy challenge with a gift like a t-shirt, hat or wristband. These offerings provide the person that donated money or took some action with an instant benefit, for example, recognition. Or the cause might offer rewards before the audience takes action. Have you ever received address labels in the mail from a good cause? They create a sense of obligation in the recipient, and so you probably felt some pressure to send money. Other options? Show how someone can save a life RIGHT NOW. Demonstrate they can feel good by making a difference THIS SECOND. And above all, make it incredibly EASY to act, so people will believe they will get the benefit exchange pronto.
Posted by katya on Wed, August 27, 2008
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