HELSINQI CREATIVE

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.

What’s your electric intersection?

Friday, 29 January 2010

Critical Path or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love (Integrity) Marketing

Published in 1981, Critical Path is one of R. Buckminster Fuller’s last and most urgent books. In it he likens the all-in effort needed to avert planetary catastrophe to the effort to put a man on the moon. (The “critical path method” is a scheduling algorithm which was used in mega-project-managing the Space Race.)

Bucky tells us in his foreword that he wrote the book for four reasons, including:

“Because of my driving conviction that all of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly, right now.”

Well then. Might as well go back to bed.

I read Critical Path in 1989, not without dismay. For that was the terminal year of Bucky’s proposed path, the year by which, he argued, either we had to have gotten our utopia on, or we could kiss our asteroid goodbye. The idea that it all hinged on everyone suddenly embracing total honesty looked like the quixotic naïveté of a brilliant man who needed to get out of his Dymaxion house more often. But, try as I might, I never could shake the old man’s exhortation. It worked on me like a proper zen koan, for years.

The trouble is, Bucky’s right. If — indulge me in a big, blinding if here — if we are to create a sustainable life for ourselves on this planet, it won’t be by sidestepping the truth. It’s all hands on deck, and transparency is the prime directive.

Not gonna happen? Not the right question. Bucky’s mission was not to wring his hands about what the rest of us would or would not do. (There are plenty keeping that project going.) His mission was to offer a solution. So that’s what he did, to the best of his remarkable knowledge, experience, and ability. And that, compadres, is leadership. What the rest of us do with it is our responsibility.

Here’s the deal: If you want to make a difference, find the most electric intersection of:

(A) What you know and love and excel at.
(B) What the world needs.

And have at it.

For my part, part A is creativity and communication, and the zeal to champion things I’m passionate about. Which happens to be the soul of good marketing (B). And my electric intersection? Building an integrity marketing agency. Making the world unsafe for status quo marketing & advertising founded on deception, coercion, and manipulation. Proving that truthful, participatory, integrity-driven marketing is more than doable, and more than just better: it’s necessary.

Tilting at windmills? Not my concern.

So what’s your electric intersection? Are you on it? ¡Felicitaciones, compadre! Still looking? It’s close by, just waiting to be recognized. Of course, finding it is not a ticket to blisstopia. On the contrary. You have to be tough-minded. You have to be hard-nosed. Just don’t waste your energy worrying about windmills.

The question is not, Is it realistic? The question is:

Props to Bucky for planting the seeds. I like to think he would have approved of Helsinqi.
Megaprops to Lindsay Hill for watering the plant.
Apologies to Dr. Strangelove.