Nancy Schwartz asks, while soliciting entries for the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants:
How do we, as nonprofit communicators, engage audiences who are overloaded with marketing messages and images?Context: Marketing and communications are everywhere. On steps, windows, tray tables on airplanes. You know the deal – and all that’s in addition to everything else that’s online and offline. Ubiquitous is the only word to describe it.
- As a result, our audiences are more saturated than ever with data, images.
- And more skeptical.
How do we:
- Penetrate the glaze of audience overload when eyes, ears and brains are simply overwhelmed
- Communicate not only the basics, but the often complex or new ideas necessary for success in nonprofit advocacy and fundraising campaigns, program delivery, etc.
- Compete with for-profit marketers who have far more resources than we do (how can we be smarter)?
All good questions, and ones that social marketers face constantly. Rohit recently wrote about the ubiquity of advertising and even the examples he came up with as so-far unused advertising space (e.g., fruits and vegetables, public restroom doors and hubcaps) have not entirely escaped the ad industry’s touch.
Despite this expansion of advertising into anything and everything that might be seen by a pair of eyeballs, marketers are also starting to realize that advertising is not necessarily the best way to get their product noticed. Hence, the trend toward product placement in television shows, movies, and even blogs.
I’ve written about this before, and I think they’re onto something. Think about getting your message out in the places that people actually pay attention (as opposed to the increasingly Tivo-ed commercial breaks or mind-numbing advertising everywhere we look). Move away from methods that shout out in blinking lights M*A*R*K*E*T*I*N*G. Move toward becoming integrated into the things people are already doing and engaged with. Embedding your message into entertainment content is one way to get that attention.
Developing relationships with your audience is another way. If they like and trust you, they will listen to what you have to say even while screening out the thousands of other marketing messages they are exposed to during the course of a day.
What are some ways a nonprofit or public agency could do this?
- Reach out to fan communities. While not every nonprofit has the resources or connections to persuade the writers of Desperate Housewives to show a character getting a mammogram or talk about getting her kids immunized, there are ways of reaching TV fans outside of advertising or “product placement.” If a show has a character that is dealing with a particular health or social issue that your organization addresses, you can reach thousands of the show’s fans by leaving a post on the show’s message board with information and a link to your website (e.g., the Desperate Housewives message board has almost 45,000 posts and probably many more people reading the messages without writing anything). Or perhaps a character on the show has a blog you can leave a comment on. Writing about the episode on your organization’s blog and tagging it in Technorati will reach anyone searching for information about the show.
- Go to where your audience is and talk to them there. You can go into virtual worlds like Second Life or MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach to talk to people about your issue. Engage in discussions on health-related message boards where people are asking questions and looking for information. Offline, sponsor a race car and distribute information at the track, work with a local restaurant to highlight healthy alternatives on the menu and create placemats or table tents with nutritional information, supply handstamps to clubs with the phone number of your safe ride program on them.
- Create your own content in which to embed your message. Saturday’s Wall Street Journal has an article (WSJ subscribers only) about how the New York Federal Reserve Bank has created a series of comic books to teach students about banking, foreign exchange and other kinds of financial information. (I just have to share this great line from the article: “Although a certain former Fed chairman ranked as a superhero on Wall Street, these comics do not feature Alan Greenspan in leotard and cape, wielding a magic clarinet against the evil forces of inflation.”) Another example is advergames – online games designed to feature a product in the context of an engaging game. mtvU and the Kaiser Family Foundation are sponsoring another contest to develop a web-based game along the lines of the previous winner, Darfur is Dying. This time they are looking for a game related to HIV/AIDS. Other ideas for content could include things like a concert, an entertaining video posted to YouTube, a ringtone, or whatever your audience is into.
- Make it easy for people to share your message with friends. When your message goes from peer to peer, it is much more powerful than coming directly from you. Provide ways that people can easily send content from your website to their friends. Provide coupons or incentives for bringing a friend to your organization. Make your fans into your brand ambassadors. A friend’s recommendation gets past the marketing filter.
- Develop a relationship with your audience members. Blogs are a great way to build a community and develop relationships with the people who are interested in what your organization does. Get the permission of people who visit your organization’s website or attend your events to send them updates on your activities and offerings. Put a human face on your organization so people feel like you are an old friend. Provide them with ways to create content and engage in a conversation with your organization and other supporters like themselves.
- Partner with other brands to integrate your message. Your audience already spends time shopping — whether at the grocery store, the mall or online — and has emotional relationships (positive & negative) with certain products. Find the brands that they prefer and try to develop partnerships with them to get your message out through cause marketing approaches. Even if you are too small to get Coca-Cola or Target to pay attention to you, look at local resources like small businesses or the branch of a larger company in your neighborhood as potential partners.
By avoiding glaring M*A*R*K*E*T*I*N*G methods and focusing your efforts on embedding your message into content and building relationships with your audience, you can get past the glazed eyes of advertising overload and into their attention zone. Make sure you make it worth their while when you get there.
[UPDATE: Here is the link to Nancy’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, which features perspectives on the same question from 14 other bloggers. It’s well worth a read!]
Photo Credit: e d d d d d d d i e
Technorati Tags: marketing, nonprofit, advertising
Nedra helps nonprofits and public agencies create positive change on health and social issues through social marketing and transmedia storytelling strategies at Weinreich Communications since founding the company in 1995. She helps organizations make a difference for the populations they serve by strategically designing programs that draw on state-of-the-art behavior change techniques, digital media approaches and the power of stories. 
Great post, Nedra. You’re right that so many marketers focus on finding ways of “cutting through the clutter” that they never realize they ARE the clutter. One of the greatest myths that many believe is that consumers are actively avoiding marketing and advertising. The truth is they are actively avoiding messages that are irrevelant and shouted at them. I would argue they are actively consuming messages that are on point and relevant – whether they are considered marketing, advertising, or just conversations (online and offline) from peer to peer.
Thanks, Rohit. I love your line: “so many marketers focus on finding ways of “cutting through the clutter” that they never realize they ARE the clutter.”