Taking The Axe To Dove

November 30, 2007

Why do they do this to me?

I've waxed eloquent over the marvelous campaign to enhance teenage girls' self-esteem — spearheaded by the viral video smash hits Onslaught and Evolution — sponsored by Dove, the soap people.

But now it's pointed out that Unilever, the parent company of Dove, also owns the Axe deodorant brand. Axe is infamous for its shameless advertising use of buxom, scantily clad, sex-crazed women to sell its product to young men.

Lots of folks are blasting Unilever for the obvious hypocrisy. No so obvious if you don't normally keep charts of which mega-package goods companies own which brands.

So do I want now to diss the Dove campaign? No. It's a hugely effective campaign with a very important message. I want Dove to do more, not less, and to keep refreshing the effort and making it more powerful.

But one has to wonder what's going on in the heads of the top brass at Unilever. Their official release says:

“The Axe campaign is a spoof of 'mating game' and men's desire to get noticed by women and not meant to be taken literally … Unilever is a large, global company with many brands in its portfolio. Each brand's efforts are tailored to reflect the unique interest and needs of its audience.”

Nonsense. They know exactly what buttons they're pushing with the Axe commercials. And using different approaches “tailored” to the audiences of different brands isn't remotely a justification.

If Unilever really cares about the integrity of its Dove campaign, it needs to do something about Axe. They can't have it both ways.

No nonprofit or charity would get away with this kind of hypocrisy. Imagine PETA selling furs to raise funds for animal welfare.

Nonprofits are held to higher standards of integrity than corporations. But the times are a'changin.

There's something about hypocrisy that seems to be getting more and more upsetting to people. As trust, which depends upon consistency, becomes a more and more valued “commodity” in all aspects of our lives, perhaps it's not surprising that hypocrisy should become more and more distasteful … and people's internal radars would become increasingly sensitive to it.

These days, if you want to mortally wound your brand — be it a nonprofit or corporate or political one (or even personal one … your reputation) — accept hypocrisy in its actions.

Tom

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Snorting Oxytocin

November 29, 2007

Attention major gift fundraisers!!

Next time you're about to pop the question to a prospect (the fundraising ask, that is), squirt a dose of oxytocin up their nose. You might get two-and-a half times the gift amount that you otherwise would have!

Now exactly how you get the relationship to the point where you can squirt a hormone up their nose is another matter. Hey, by the time you're making a serious ask you should have developed such a relationship! Or you can just spring it on them … if you get your squirt in, they'll feel good about you no matter what.

The basis of this advice?

Research reported in the marvelous blog, Neuromarketing.

It turns out that oxytocin, a naturally occurring compound in the brain, acts as a sort of social cement. And when enhanced doses are introduced in controlled experiments, it produces quite measurable increases in pro-social feelings, such as enhanced trust.

In one experiment, participants play a “trust game” where some are invited to “invest” simulated money with others. Those dosed with oxytocin were over twice as likely to “invest” the maximum amount as those who weren't administered the drug.

Apparently a lot of research is going on around oxytocin, as well as around the ethics of its use.

So get yours now before the FDA clamps down!

Forget donors, I know a lot of fundraisers who would do better if they self-administered some of this stuff.

Tom

Many thanks to Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog for this pointer. (Jeff, I'm a nut about brain research and I hadn't noticed this site!). Jeff makes a serious point here about the deep emotional roots of giving.

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Lift Conversions Up To 55%

November 28, 2007

Do you really serious about raising more money online? Or capturing more activists or leads? Or selling more merchandise?

Then run out (i.e., go online) and buy Marketing Sherpa's new Landing Page Handbook. Here's where.

I don't know anyone who collects more hard data on marketing than Marketing Sherpa. And this empirically-driven book tells you what you need to know about crafting web landing pages that close the sale.

Not a book by a dreamy creative director or web developer … rather, a book about marketing by marketers. It ain't cheap; but it will earn its keep.

As Seth Godin says, this book is full of hands on, verified info … “The bad news is that you are now out of excuses.”

And no, I don't own stock in Marketing Sherpa.

Tom

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Nonprofits’ Use Of Online Video Blossoms

November 27, 2007

In case you missed it during the pre-Thanksgiving crush, here's a superb report (free link) on nonprofits' use of online video by Peter Panepeto of the Chronicle of Philanthropy (Nov 15).

Peter provides examples, with links to the videos, from the American Jewish World Service, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the March of Dimes and others. None of these appear to be fundraising grand slams. They belong more in the category of essential experimentation in awareness building, outreach to non-traditional audiences, member/donor engagement, and volunteer/staff training.

As Peter points out, YouTube alone, with 59 million visitors/month, but also 10,000 hours of new video per day, represents a sort of Mount Everest of online video. Lots of eyeballs, but lots of competition too.

That said, the VFW managed to produce a video that reached #17 on the YouTube most-watched list. And YouTube is working to nurture a special charities domain within its service, which IMHO, a nonprofit would need to be absolutely foolish not to experiment with.

According to Peter — and I'll second his observation — many in the nonprofit world believe “online video is the next major trend in charity communications.”

Happily, often what works best is shockingly inexpensive. For a couple of thousand dollars, a nonprofit can begin a process of “continuous documentation” of its work, the people it helps, its success stories, its satisfied donors. Do it!

Is online video a panacea … will it put you on the fast track to fundraising glory? In most cases, not yet. Remember the competition from skateboarding dogs is pretty fierce!

But can you produce worthwhile results? Absolutely. Especially if you have an eye and ear for good storytelling.

Here's my favorite of the videos Peter reported on … Ezekiel's Story, from the March of Dimes. Now watched by almost 214,000 viewers. And inspiration for about 600 other stories, including many with videos and pictures.

Not bad!

Tom

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Online Donors Make Bigger Gifts, Despite AmEx Study

November 26, 2007

A recent study sponsored by American Express said that online and offline donations were generally the same size.

In this memorandum, Guest Agitators Nick Allen of Donordigital and Rob Harris of Target Analysis Group take exception. They argue that the hard data based on actual giving across a broad spectrum of nonprofits clearly establish that online donors make higher average gifts. They note that the AmEx study was based on phone interviews.

For all 24 groups studied by Allen/Harris in their donorCentrics Internet Giving Collaborative Benchmarking Report, online gift amounts were consistently higher than offline amounts … in 75% of these groups, average online gifts were at least twice as much.

Allen/Harris suggest three reasons:

  • virtually all the online gifts are via credit card;
  • online donors' household incomes are higher and people make small gifts from current income rather than from wealth; and,
  • online donors are generally younger, and younger donors typically make larger gifts than the age 65+ donors who dominate many direct mail files.

Our experience — from both the hard data and the survey data we've seen — definitely confirms what Nick and Rob report.

You can read their memo here.

Tom

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Charity Navigator Panned

November 21, 2007

Writing as a guest on the Tactical Philanthropy blog this week, Michael Soper, formerly SVP of Development at PBS and WETA, has written the article I've just never gotten around to writing.

The title tells it all: Strong Marketing of a Weak Success Measure: Charity Navigator Vital Mission Hides Flawed Rankings.

Soper describes well how the grossly simplistic array of ratios used by Charity Navigator can be injurious at worst (harming the reputations of nonprofits wrongly “ranked”), and woefully incomplete at best.

As he puts it: “Charity Navigator, its ratings, and its top ten lists are nothing more than great merchandising of a weak underlying product.” He characterizes the lists as “the 'National Enquirer' approach to a topic that demands more substantive evaluation of nonprofits' effectiveness and efficiency.”

Amen!

Soper believes there's no real substitute for donors really getting engaged and taking the trouble to dig in and learn about the various organizations purporting to work in the donor's area of interest.

Amen again.

To the nonprofits who want to be evaluated on some basis other than simplistic fundraising ratios, I would offer these rules:

  1. Bend over backwards to be transparent and plain-speaking on all financial matters.
  2. Commit to serious, sustained efforts to measure the outcomes of your endeavors (and I mean outcomes, not “process” measures).
  3. Don't BS your prospects and stakeholders about your progress (donors, like all modern consumers, have evolved highly sensitive BS radars … and they now have the online tools to easily broadcast their negative readings far and wide).

Finally, if you're a really serious donor, you might check out the painstaking investigative and evaluative processes employed by the folks at the GiveWell Blog. Sometimes their empiricism is a little forced for my taste, but they certainly show us what it means to keep a strong focus on results when evaluating nonprofits.

Thanks for getting your misgivings on paper, Michael Soper … you deserve a raise.

Tom

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The Secret Sauce Of Brand Loyalty

November 20, 2007

Here's a report on top brands as researched by marketing consultancy Brand Keys.

#1 on the list is Google; #2 is Yahoo. Catalog-driven companies do well, led by L.L.Bean at #4 and J. Crew at #6 (Sears, Eddie Bauer and Land's End were in the top 25).

The report cited above mentions convenience as a driver of brand loyalty. It's tough to conceive of (and nurture) loyalty to a nonprofit brand in terms of convenience, since most nonprofits do not deliver a service or products to their donor constituencies.

But loyalty is really built upon something deeper than “convenience” in the sense of facilitating or easing a purchase. And nonprofits can deliver on that “something deeper.”

The “something deeper” is trust.

A consumer would not pick up the phone or click the mouse if she did not trust L.L. Bean to meet her expectations of quality, service and suitability without question. That trusting relationship would have been built over time through a series of “successful” interactions between the consumer and the company, where her expectations were indeed met … and even better, exceeded.

Most interactions between nonprofits and their donors (sticking with that single constituency for this post) consist merely of the former passing along information to the latter, in the form of emails, web content, letters, newsletters and other publications. And at occasional junctures, a financial transaction occurs.

During that process, the donor forms an impression and draws a conclusion based on that impression. Ideally something like this …

“This organization knows what they're doing … they are effective and successful … they use my contributions with care and efficiency … they are accomplishing (or making discernible progress against) the needs/goals I had in mind … they appreciate me … I've begun to trust them … I feel good about 'them'.”

And where the organization offers meaningful paths and opportunities for donor involvement (e.g., volunteering, online networking), the process can and should reach even further, to … “I am one of them.”

How well do your interactions with your donors lead them down that path, which for them begins with an emotional need (save this, fight that, help them), proceeds through a “test” stage with practical questions and observations, and hopefully ends with an emotional commitment … at least trust, and maybe a sense of belonging?

Examine your nonprofit's interactions with donors through this lens. Are your communications meaningful and instrumental in terms of building a relationship of trust?

If so, you're on the way to building brand equity — and loyalty — for your nonprofit.

Tom

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Direct Mail Dinosaur Advice On Online Fundraising

November 19, 2007

Just like the title says, here are five useful tips on online fundraising from avowed direct mail dinosaur Karen Taggart at care2. Read the details here.

1. Segment your file.

2. Incorporate variable ask strings.

3. Code, code, and code some more.

4. Analyze your returns at the end of a series.

5. Evaluate success based on long-term ROI and net, not just gross revenue.

To these five, commenter Kim Cubine added:

6. Don't bury the ask.

7. Test, test, test.

Thanks to Ellen Church at CMS for the tip.

And while you're on the subject, you might want to read this insightful article on the convergence of email and direct mail marketing from consultant Sari Tamillo at MBS, a marketing services provider.

Tom

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Stand And Deliver

November 16, 2007

Here's a great, succinct list of tips for making effective stand-up presentations.

From Chris Brogan, a blogger on social media & networking.

Tom

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Good Idea From North Carolina

November 15, 2007

Todd Cohen at Philanthropy Journal reports here on Nonprofit Awareness Month, a collective effort in North Carolina to foster awareness of the role nonprofits play in the state and to encourage volunteerism and giving.

Something nonprofits in other states might want to try.

Roger & Tom

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