Brave People and Loyal Fans Eline Tuerlings and Jeroen Janssen Fontys Hogeschool Communicatie Management Eindhoven, The Netherlands - June 2013
Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give insights on how business-to-business organisations can make use of communication 2.0 / co-creation as part of the sponsorship policy. Methodology/approach - Within this paper co-creation is used in the form of a brainstorm session with stakeholders from Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught (NMKV). This session led to a central theme, which can be used to create both a corporate identity as well as a guideline for the management of the organisation. Findings – One of the conclusion of this research was that co-creation is a good method to give meaning to the sponsorship policy of a business-to-business organisation, as it has led to a central theme with effective measures to embed this into the organisation. Practical implications/ limitations – Creating a central theme, in order to identify the identity and operational aspects, is actually a task of the supervisory board. For that reason this will be formulated in the form of a corporate story. Originality/value - In this paper, co-creation is used in a business-to-business environment in order to make decisions about the identity, sponsorship policy (method of fundraising) and managerial aspects of Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught, this way a dialogue is created between the organisation and its stakeholders.
Keywords - co-creation, communication 2.0, meaning, sponsorship, fundraising.
Introduction The time in which organisations should solely focus on transmitting information has ended. As a company, it is becoming more and more important nowadays to start a dialogue with your stakeholders. Over the years, people have become more assertive, feeling the need to contribute and provide organisations with ‘useful’ input and feedback. This is a rather frightening development, because it means that organisations and communication professionals actually lose some of the control they have regarding
the communication with the target group. It can be said that the more an organisation is taking control, the less control the organisation actually tends to have. Companies often struggle with this; however this struggle isn’t always necessary. You can also think of these developments as an opportunity, something to use to your advantage. Companies should not be afraid of feedback and comments, but benefit from them. By starting a dialogue with your stakeholders, you’re making use of the concept of co-creation; this offers various innovative opportunities for an
organisation. Together with your stakeholders, your organisation might develop ideas the best PR specialist could never think of. Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught (NMKV) is an organisation that has made proper use of these developments. It is a memorial centre that aims to soften the absurdity from the persecution of 31.000 people in concentration camp Vught. Keeping this in mind, NMKV wants to tackle intolerance, polarisation and oppression in today’s society. Annually, the monument welcomes almost 65.000 visitors, half of which are students. The majority of the monument’s income consists of the subsidies they receive from the government. The monument being a public place to mourn and commemorate, means that the organisation is legally not allowed to ask visitors some sort of an entrance fee. To be fully dependent on subsidies is a limitation, as it becomes more and more difficult to obtain government aid. Nowadays, the government is increasingly more reluctant to offer subsidies, while there is an increase in foundations that are applying for grants. At NMKV some fear exists that they cannot continue to exist, as they have no funds to innovate. It would be a shame if a great organisation with this amount of history ceased to exist due to lack of funding. This is exactly the reason why they need to find a new and effective way to start raising more funds. The issue of the NMKV is thus as follows: “On the basis of what kind of communication strategy can Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught make companies, employees and volunteers committed? The underlying goal being that more companies join the foundation Beschermers so that they are therewith contributing to a solid financial base.”
In response to this issue, the organisation agreed to use co-creation as the appropriate communication strategy to tackle this problem. Not only can cocreation be used when it comes to commercial purposes, non-profit organisations can also use this strategy to their advantage. Generally speaking, every company can benefit from this strategy, provided that the organisation dares to partly let loose of the influence and control they are used to have. Meaning that when following a strategy as the one described above, the company truly has to listen to the input received from its stakeholders. This paper shows, how NMKV started working with cocreation and how this led to a new concept which must become the basic principle of the organisation.
The Monument – A closer look To address the issue set forth by Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught, first the organisation must be analysed critically. The main conclusion from the internal analysis is that the identity of the monument is not clearly formulated by the organisation itself. The organisation clearly has in mind what their purpose is, yet this is not concretely described anywhere. Due to this, stakeholders might have slightly different perspectives regarding the goals, values, mission and vision of NMKV. This allows for possibly an inconsistent image to the outside world. It is important to know what the social function of your organisation is and how you want to communicate this. After all, it could be something that can persuade companies to support NMKV. Therefore, the first step is to concretely formulate a new and innovative identity. As construction an identity is one of the tasks of the supervisory board, the identity will be expressed in the form of a corporate story.
Communication 2.0 Companies often engage in a traditional way of defining their identity, meaning that the management often formulates the framework for the identity without external input. This is rather old-fashioned, because as mentioned early solely emitting information isn’t quite an option for organisations any more. In many cases the management has somewhat of a tunnel vision, lacking the fresh look towards the organisation that it needs when considering the needs of the environment. In other words, an organisation in fact wants to receive input from the environment regarding its existence and social function. By creating a dialogue between the organisation and its stakeholders, an organisation can give meaning to its identity in a new and innovative way. The result is co-creation, and accordingly communication 2.0. Using co-creation in formulating your identity has many advantages. For example, it provides new insights and a fresh perspective, which often has a stimulating effect. Moreover, the dialogue between an organization and their stakeholders is frequently rather inspiring and increases creativity. People become co-owners of the issue at hand, which makes co-creation possible. This way mutual commitment is immediately created, something NMKV can benefit from. The monument believes that an image created in collaboration with its stakeholders is more likely to succeed on the long-term. This is the reason for starting fundraising activities using cocreation.
Brainstorm session The co-creation process for Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught was initiated with
a brainstorm session. The aim of this session was to formulate a consistent scenario (identity) in the form of a corporate story. This story will eventually give NMKV guidelines to start fundraising. Selecting who should be present at the brainstorm session is an essential element of the co-creation process, therefore every major stakeholder should be represented during this session. Meaning that not only employees and the management should participate in this session, but also external stakeholders. Given that, there is decided to involve the board of the foundation known as Beschermers (the companies affiliated with this foundation already support NMKV). This board consists of a diverse group of people who are already, in their own way, involved with NMKV. Within the board there is at least one representative of each major stakeholder, for instance, the director of a construction company, the management of NMKV, the director of ABN AMRO, a journalist at Graafsma-Kremers, employees and volunteers. The brainstorm session commences with an inspiring presentation on the topic of co-creation, branding 2.0, NMKV and the goal of the meeting. The presentation at the beginning of the session aims to convince the members of the board on the benefits and effectiveness of the session. Moreover, the participants are directly informed on the agenda points for the meeting and the practicality of a corporate story in general. After the presentation the participants start with a writing session. That way, the board literally takes part in writing the corporate story. After which, everyone receives a questionnaire, which they must answer for themselves. The list contains questions regarding the identity, the vision, the mission, the reason for existence of the organisation, and questions such as “who
is the hero in the story”. The purpose of this individual assignment is that the participants first think separately about the organisation before influencing one another. Writing on a piece of paper promotes creativity so that is preferred over using a laptop. In addition, paper is chosen over the use of a laptop because an electronic device changes one’s writing, it becomes more pragmatic and business focused. A corporate story should be narrative, yet a story typed on an electronic device is rarely that. Once the writing session has come to an end, the responses are discussed among all participants. Subsequently, the questions are raised once more, now in public, so that everyone is able to respond. A discussion is consequently set in motion between the management and the stakeholders; the participants are able to build on each other’s answers, leading to innovative and creative end-results. The conclusion drawn from the session was that the board considers the ‘tone of voice’ of the story to be very important. It should not be a hilarious story because that doesn’t match the past events the monument stands for. However, the board does believe that the story should be a positive one, focusing on creating a link between the past and the present, showing people that there is a need for Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught to sustain. The board finds it difficult to choose a main character for the story; one thinks of incorporating the director of the Monument, another feels a clumsy history teacher type of character should fill the role. They all agree that abstract things such as freedom, terror and persecution should be defined within the corporate story. This is tricky, since the board aspires a relatively light-hearted story. Eventually the four-hour session led to a
central theme endorsed by all: ‘Brave People’.
The concept: Brave people The concept ‘brave people’ will become a central focus point within the organisation and serves as a story line to the corporate story. The corporate story thus becomes a tool to assure that the new theme, aka corporate image ‘brave people’, is showing through in the organisation. The entire board is excited about the theme, mainly due to the fact that it is an interesting theme with a positive meaning. The board describes ‘brave people’ as persons who, despite risking their lives dare to make choices based on their own values. By creating a link between ‘brave people’ from the past and in the present, it becomes tangible for people why NMKV should continue to exist. Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught shows that it is one’s choice to be brave in a tough situation. They do this by regularly looking back at the past. NMKV shows that the occupation of the Netherlands was an extreme time in history, in which people faced some incredibly difficult decisions. Some people found themselves in terror; many in very difficult and even hopeless situations, without being able to influence these. A small group of brave people had the courage and conviction to actively resist against the occupation. The latter would help the persecuted to hide and disappear; they committed robberies against the enemy, participated in banned radiobroadcasts and distributed illegal newspapers as counterweight to the pervasive propaganda of the occupier. Many of these resistance heroes were unfortunately betrayed and put in camps, for example at concentration camp Vught (now NMKV). The monument wants to highlight that making choices like the ones
that are mentioned here are not just something that belongs to the past, even nowadays in crisis, decisions have to be made that directly influence others. Even in today’s society, there are people who hurt others unjust, often because of political beliefs of other disagreements on opinions. Still there are a couple of countries run by dictators, countries in which people are oppressed and where wars have been going on for decades. Unfortunately, crisis-situations are always present, even in these modern times. This is why NMKV is so important as it promotes and protects ‘courage’ in today’s society. Thus, by describing courageous people past and present, the NMKV links both the historic event and the current society, making it tangible for visitors in realizing why the monument should remain to exist. This message in combination with the theme ‘brave people’ was developed during the brainstorm session, and due to the fact that this was a collaboration between NMKV and their stakeholders it is a fully supported theme. An idea as such, in accordance with a suitable concept is not easily conceived, no matter which advertising agency works on the issue. A co-creation session as described in this paper, with highly motivated people allows for non-conventional thinking. This means that you don’t just think from the organisational point of view, but actually ask your target group what they expect from the organisation. In the case of Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught this development has led to a leading message with meaning.
Review of the concept Of course it is important to test whether the theme ‘brave people’ fits the rest of the target audience. After all, you want to know if other companies connect with the created theme and if they link that with the
importance of sustaining the monument. For that reason face-to-face discussions with the current Beschermers (investors currently supporting the monument whom are linked with the Foundation Beschermers) are set up. During these conversations the respondent reads the corporate story, after which they can give their opinion on the concept and the interviewer can has time to ask some other questions. The theme ‘brave people’ and the message corresponding with that were very well received by the current Beschermers of the monument. The idea to stimulate bravery and courage, to teach children that brave people (and NMKV) are still necessary in today’s society is something the Foundation Beschermers likes to contribute to. They therefore fully agree with the message associated with the central theme ‘brave people’. These additional conversations with the Beschermers show that during the brainstorm session with the stakeholders a theme that fits the need of the target group was created.
Recommendations At the beginning of this paper the issue raised by Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught was stated. The monument wanted to know which communication method works best when discussing methods of fundraising. Due to the fact that the ‘corporate story’ cannot really be called a communication strategy, this chapter was set up describing how the monument should approach the introduction of the new theme ‘brave people’ into the organisation. The whole process has shown that Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught can make use of the fan-strategy. This became evident after the research that was conducted, and from the discussion between the organisation and its stakeholders. The fan-strategy means that NMKV and the current Beschermers
(who are fans) use their network to create new fans. Organizing a network event and inviting business relationships from the companies that support the Foundation Beschermers can lead to an increase in number of companies supporting NMKV. During the event the theme ‘brave people’ will be actively used and promoted, convincing people to support NMKV. The ultimate goal of this is to increase the number of companies joining the Foundation Beschermers, and increasing the amount of financial support for the monument. Before the event is organised more meaning needs to be added to the concept ‘brave people’. The corporate story is there, yet needs to have some more depth. The organisation will need to put time and effort into this, assuring that the theme becomes part of the organisation. A more in-depth meaning of the concept can have a lot of additional value. To give additional meaning to the concept is something that can be achieved in various ways but needs to be done with a lot of care. To start with, the management can ask itself questions such as: ‘when is someone brave/courageous? What does courage mean in today’s society? What did courage mean in the past?’. By giving additional meaning to the concept NMKV could in the long run build a community around the theme and the monument itself. A fun idea would be for example to award prices to courageous people in The Netherlands. The aim is that organisations eventually will publicly state that they encourage brave people by supporting NMKV. This means that they will use this in their own marketing communication strategy. This is both beneficial for the image and reputation of the monument as well as the company that is providing support. That way, more and more companies will likely want to join the community the Foundation Beschermers
and thus support NMKV. In order to realize this community, a platform needs to be created, one that is actively managed, contains conversations and content made for and by both the organisation and the stakeholders. This means that there are still many things the monument needs to consider when giving concrete meaning to the concept. This can of course also be achieved through the use of co-creation with both internal and external stakeholders. That way you create once again a platform of involved people who are motivated by the fact that they feel coownership. Once the concept has somewhat of a tangible more in-depth meaning, it becomes important that the theme is actually embedded into the organisation. Research suggests that ‘behaviour’ is one of the most difficult things to manage in an organisation, as there is often a gap between finding, thinking and actually executing. So once the concept ‘brave people’ has extra meaning that doesn’t directly mean that the concept is integrated into the organisation. If that doesn’t happen, the fan-strategy, and thus the fundraising activities will be less successful or even fail. Birkigt and Stadler (1986) describe this in their model regarding corporate identity. They say that the theme should be embedded in three parts of the organisation, namely behaviour, communication and in the symbolism. There are many options that can be used in order to embed the concept ‘brave people’ into these three parts. One example is that the monument could focus on arranging a new exhibition on courageous people from the past and courageous people in the present.
Flexibility After all this, it should be clear that NMKV thought about this fundraising issue in a rather original manner. In a traditional
strategic communication plan the organisation determines up front the results that need to be achieved, and how these are going to be achieved. This is pretty outdated since a lot of environmental variables that exist and influence the situation, are outside of the organisation’s control. Thus it can be said that flexibility is the keyword in communication 2.0. The new model ‘Reflectieve Communicatie Scrum’ by Betteke van Ruler (2013) shows this (figure 1). She describes in her new theory that individuals and interactions are more important than sticking to a protocol. Managing change and the effects changes have on communication are thus also more important than clinging on to the plan agreed upon in advance. Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught has been very flexible throughout the process, since they didn’t know in advance where the cocreation process would lead to. At the
beginning it was very difficult to estimate how much the direction of the organisation, the communication and the symbolism would need to change. However the monument was fully committed to the creative process and allowed co-creation to guide them in developing their identity, the concept ‘brave people’. Rather important to note is that the concept was entirely created by the organisation and its stakeholders – a regular advertising agency probably wouldn’t have thought of it. Communication 2.0 is therefore an opportunity that an organisation could benefit from, if you’re willing to be flexible and dare to start a discussion with your stakeholders. The question is really, why wouldn’t you dare to do this, because NMKV shows that courageous companies can use communication 2.0 to get the best out of their own organisation.
Figure 1: Reflectieve Communicatie Scrum
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