By Jennifer Ian, MBA, CAE
Speakers at NYSAE’s recent Marketing & PR Summit, held in New York City offered many tips to the diverse audience, with new insights and some good reminders geared to help attendees sharpen and refresh their skills. In this ever competitive world, there was plenty of valuable information presented on how to help your organization stand out and vibrant discussion between the presenters and attendees.
From left: Sacha Evans, Director, Corkery Group Unlimited;
Tara Framer, CEO, Tara Framer Design;
Doug Gould President, DG+Co;
Your brand defines you, it elicits a response, said Tara Framer, of Tara Framer Design, in her talk about Your Brand is the Front Door to Your Organization. She added that some experts suggest you need up to ten exposures of your message to get your audience to absorb it. Your story should be told with results, with a goal of aiming for emotional resonance in your message. Are you promoting your organization’s anniversary? Make it relevant for audiences to care about it. She suggested considering all five senses as branding assets. Verbal and visual are the most common with words and color. Also consider olfactory, tactile and auditory. For auditory she mentioned that the presence and use of virtual assistants, such as Siri, is increasing at a rapid rate. Tara suggested that to stay relevant many associations must rebrand themselves.
Doug Gould of DG+Co spoke on Beyond Branding: Engaging New Audiences to Ensure Your Success. He opened by saying that nonprofits need to watch the jargon - or ‘insider speak’ - in their messages, especially for messages geared to those not familiar with the organization. Don’t keep “playing the old tapes.” Information and news releases should be NEWS-worthy. Extend the organization’s efforts beyond only online communications; it’s more effective to use multiple channels to reach audiences. Define the intended outcome of your messages. A good message will be true, inspire a connection with your organization, hit emotions over facts (but be supported by facts), and be repeatable and speakable in 3 to 5 seconds. Examples include “Black lives matter” and “Me too.” Organize your messages by problem, solution, action.
Sarah Durham, CEO, Big Duck;
Many NGOs invest too little in social media (“social”), according to Sacha Evans, Director, Corkery Group Unlimited. Only eleven percent of NGOs have a full or part-time social manager, and CEOs often are not believers in social, she said. So - why do social? For the clicks – response is measurable. For control – you can define your audience, such as with ads. It’s cheap – or free (a modest ad buy will improve your results). And for legitimacy – having a social media platform makes you appear more legitimate. Sacha emphasized the importance of defining your target audience. She mentioned that Facebook has the biggest, most engaged audience with 68 percent of Americans, and is bigger than Google in driving traffic, and that Snapchat is the fastest growing social network.
The day was capped off by a luncheon where keynote speaker Sarah Durham, CEO, Big Duck, shared concepts about the various components of organizational branding. Among her key points was that positioning – or binding your brand to a cause - is the single biggest idea to strive for. An example would be Red Cross equates to disaster relief or Red Cross equates to donating blood. Another tenet is that personality is your organization’s tone and style. In an example, she compared the different tone and styles of three organizations committed to fighting animal cruelty – ASPCA (friendly), The Humane Society of the United States (grassroots), and PETA (edgy). Together, Positioning and Personality equal the brand strategy of an organization.
Jennifer Ian, MBA, CAE, is Director, Member Services and Chapter Relations at the American Thoracic Society.