HELSINQI CREATIVE

The Inopportuneness of Being Earnest

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

One of the pitfalls of marketing by principled companies and organizations is Deadly Earnest Syndrome, a tragic condition that afflicts the well-meaning. It drives them to decide they have to distinguish themselves from unscrupulous advertisers by means of “pure” messaging untainted by humor, cool, style, attitude, smoke machines, or anything else that smells of dog and pony. In other words: marketing without any of the art of marketing.

DES is caused by deep ambivalence about marketing and advertising, which the afflicted associate with roguishness and duplicity: they see it as a force for evil. Which, hey, it often is. But that’s tough to reconcile with the bald fact that marketing is necessary. If marketing weren’t necessary, no one would do it. End of thought experiment.

Faced with that ambivalence, they try to promote themselves without resorting to the “tricks of the trade.” They try to market without marketing. And they wind up creating strange, conflicted monsters — messaging that’s typically either sanctimonious or tedious, or both.

I was intrigued to come across the “Tom’s of Maine Goodness Philosophy” long-format ad, on Hulu. The message is essentially a mainstream paean to the triple bottom line (of people, planet, and profit, except not so much the profit part) — which is certainly an interesting development, culturally speaking. Unfortunately it’s delivered as an artificially sweetened lecture on virtuous capitalism, whose relentless brow-knitting goodyness made me want to gnaw my own foot off.

» Read the rest of this post

Respect on the Porch

Monday, 01 February 2010

In integrity marketing, all shortcuts are dead ends.

Recently a canvasser from a nonprofit activist group whose work I respect knocked on our front door. Never mind that we were finishing dinner; that’s par for the course. The problem, as I politely pointed out, was the No Solicitors sign mounted front and center on our door.

Now, I’m a nice guy. I treat everybody with respect. Even those who don’t see the wisdom of reciprocating. I didn’t shout the guy off my porch, partly because I was curious as to how he would justify disregarding our sign. Yes, he had seen the sign, but he persisted, pointing out that we had supported them in the past, and was I aware of current Big Problem X and that now, more than ever, they needed my money, time, and any extra limbs I could spare?

The thing is, I’m also an independent-minded chap who does not take well to being sold (which doesn’t make me rare). Solicitors on our porch have been doomed to leave empty-handed. Nine times out of ten that’s because they’re pushing a religion I don’t need, including the Church of the Immaculate Vinyl Siding. The rest of the time, it’s because I simply don’t buy on impulse. The best a canvasser can hope for is that they will have made me aware of a cause that interests me enough to look further into it on my own time. I’ll weigh it against the other myriad causes I believe in, and put my support where I decide it will have the most positive effect.

That takes a long view, but canvassers are focussed on the immediate win. Once in a while, in the primordial past, they might have gotten that win from me in the form of a one-time donation. It would have come at the cost of a big loss: my resentment at having allowed myself be coerced. That’s a bad trade for everybody.

Rare is the canvasser who realizes that the more he pushes me, the more he loses me. So stupendously rare, in fact, that we quashed the whole charade and put up our No Solicitors sign. Now we eat dinner in peace without random people wasting our time and theirs.

Except in the case of Mr. Persistent. By dismissing our clearly expressed wish not to be solicited to at home, he apparently hoped to bully me into giving him his small win. Instead, I saw him off and then unsubscribed myself from the organization’s email list — a big loss. May they enjoy great success. Without me.

There are thousands, probably millions of organizations doing work I believe in. It’s a buyer’s market. Any help reducing that number and tightening my focus is welcome. Any organization that tries to make an end run around the simple respect its supporters deserve — and plainly ask for — is making the process of elimination that much easier for me.

Topic for another day: this principle extends beyond the front porch and deep into an organization’s messaging. Nonprofits are by no means above non-integrity marketing. While good organizations avoid deception per se, coercion and manipulation (read: guilt) are the typical default mode. It’s easy to see why. It’s important to understand why not.