Robin Hood Marketing, Colombia Style


Left: Director of Marketing Catalina Mejía and Right: Executive Director Ángela Escallón Emiliani of Conexion Colombia.

I’m at the Conexion Colombia nonprofit conference in Bogota, where I spoke on Robin Hood Marketing and online outreach - and where I got to hear from a Colombian marketing guru as well as a panel of corporate marketing executives.  I want to share some of what I learned in one post today, another tomorrow.  What was most clear was this: Good marketing principles are the same, anywhere in the world.

Gabriel Perez, professor of marketing at the University of Los Andes, and someone who has marketed everything from Chiclets to cars, had these universal insights to offer:

1. Old school.  Perez said marketing used to work like this:  A company would think it had an offering that was so important, people would come looking for it - and buy it.  Unfortunately, this is how I think much of nonprofit marketing still operates - we have a great cause, so we expect people to know about it - and give.

2. Modern marketing.  For-profit marketers have realized this isn’t enough.  The point of marketing isn’t to offer what we think is best - it’s to listen to consumers, understand their needs, and innovate to meet those needs.  Marketing in this way permeates an entire organization, because it fuels product development, not just promotion.  This is what great companies do - and what nonprofits need to do.  What do your donors want?  What do your beneficiaries feel?  How can you structure all you do to meet their needs better?

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